


Elskende

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace), wildamongwolves



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Concubinage, Dubious Consent, Exhibitionism, Imprinting, Language Barrier, M/M, Mates, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Misunderstandings, Omega Stiles Stilinski, Pseudo roman history, Raven Lydia, Sex Toys, Sterek Reverse Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-11 11:08:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildamongwolves/pseuds/wildamongwolves
Summary: Stiles is an omega concubine, kept sequestered away in the city of Beacon Hills, waiting for his lord Gerard Argent when the Wulver take the city and the alpha takes the omega.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wildamongwolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildamongwolves/gifts).



> Art by wildamongwolves  
> you can see the whole work here  
> https://wildamongwolves.tumblr.com/post/175960651892/my-second-piece-for-sterekreversebang-it

Elskende with [Art by Wildamongwolves](https://wildamongwolves.tumblr.com/post/175960651892/my-second-piece-for-sterekreversebang-it)

 

 

Beacon Hills was burning.

The fire from the Wulver horde’s invasion was sweeping through the poorer areas of the city. Stiles was stood on his stool trying to peer through the window to see what was happening. It rocked a little on the uneven slate floor of his private cell.

The sky was a rich orange. The flames were reflected against the rain clouds that hung over the city but didn’t break to aid in the attempts to fight the blaze and the barbarian’s howls hanging on the wind were chilling him to the bone.

Beacon Hills was a tiered city built on a hill beside the river, Agemicon, where the natural location served as its first defense. They had built the city in rings, each with a great wall so that an invader would have to break three sieges, and the rings could be sacrificed.

The inner wall, which Stiles could see from his window, was covered in wisteria which smelled sweetly in the late spring, but he also knew, from his reading, that it had riddled the wall with weaknesses.

The Republic never beleieved those walls would be breached. No army would dare to even attack Beacon Hills and the first two rings were there to get through first.

The outer tier was the city’s slums, with wooden hovels that could be burned quickly to drive out invaders and the city’s poor fleeing would slow any army breaching the walls.

The second tier was the brick houses of the merchants, built in mazes to confuse any army that made it that far. Stone towers would allow the guards to throw things at the invaders.

Finally were the palaces of the senators and noble houses of the city, including the palace of Lord Argent, to whom Stiles belonged.

From the highest tier of the city Stiles couldn't make out most of what was happening, there was shouting and the occasional boom of a building collapsing in on itself. In his cell he had no idea what was truly happening- sequestered away as he was he couldn't even go to a part of the villa where the other people were congregating to find out what was happening.

With his hands grabbed tight to the grille over his window and the stool rocking beneath him, Stiles watched the city burn.

Stiles had spent most of his life in the cell. As an omega, it was expected that he would be sequestered away waiting to come of age when he would be presented to his master, Lord Argent. He was a man that Stiles had never met or even seen to his knowledge.

His cage was opulent. It was a room in the manor with bath and privy, both with real running water- a pump with a drain underneath it to allow him to empty his used water straight into the city’s drains. It had a comfortable bed, and shelves of items for him to learn from but there was a small passage between the door, which locked, and the large wooden cage wall that marked the end of his world.

He was a rarity in the Republic and he had known no other life.

This was what was expected of an omega.

They were taken from their families by their patron and raised in rooms like this; to be exactly what their patron wanted from them. They were educated to the level that their patron wanted. They were pampered and privileged and given a life that many in the Republic would never experience.

He wore silk chiton made of fabric as soft as clouds, held in place with real calfskin leather belts and gold brooches set with precious stones.

He was perfumed and oiled and prepared and educated.

He was everything an omega should be.

His nurse and guard, Jennifer, had told him that his parents were proud that he had been chosen to serve a man like Lord Argent. It was a point of pride to have produced an omega who could serve the nobility and to serve Lord Argent. The Dictator for Life of the Republic was without compare.

She told him that his memories of the soldiers coming in with drawn swords and slapping his mother across the face as he was taken were dreams. He had made it up. He had been surrendered peacefully and happily. They had been proud to serve.

He would serve as concubine until Lord Argent released him, or died- and Lord Argent had a granddaughter older than Stiles himself- and then the Argent family would allow him a pension to live out his life as he chose.

He would be free to find another patron if he wished.

Not all omega were so blessed as he.

 

Stiles could smell the smoke, thick and dark, rolling like fog around the tops of the stone buildings of the upper echelon mansions. The marble columns would be stained with it.

He had never seen it’s like.

There had been fires in the city before but never with the rain of arrows and the shouting. The centurion's banners were marching in the street. But from the window, high in the upper echelons of the city, unable to make out details of what was truly happening, Stiles watched those banners and standards fall.

He could hear the Wulver howling.

“Come away from there," his nurse, Jennifer, chided from the door, she had her hands on her hips, “gawking like a common street whore," whenever Stiles did something he was always compared to a common street whore and not the chosen omega of Lord Argent- a man he had never even met.

There had always been war. This was just the first time it had touched Beacon Hills.

The Republic had spent his entire lifetime invading and taking other lands. Argent was a strong Lord Dictator. He expanded the Republic and brought civilization to the barbarian lands, they should be proud that he chose to introduce culture to them. It was said that they wore fur and beads of bone in their beards like wild animals.

Stiles had never seen them, and he was curious. He was a curious boy. Often when he was punished it was for his curiosity, for what use did an omega have for curiosity or learning of anything other than the poets.

He was the chosen omega of Lord Argent, his entire purpose was to bring succor to the Lord Dictator, to bring him calm in his life of struggle, he served so that Lord Argent could serve the Republic.

He wasn't very good at it though.

He learned the poems quickly and could practice the breathy intonation and he could play the chelys, the pandura, and the aulos flute. They were the sacred instruments of the goddess Valia to whom omega were dedicated, and he, like any true servant had learned to prostrate himself in her name.

He knew all of the forms of prayer; the poetry; the music; the dance and even how to present himself and his body so that Lord Argent, who had never called upon him, would be pleased. In serving the goddess he served the Republic but he wanted to know.

He wanted to know about the countries that the army conquered. He wanted to see the wolf-tribes of the north who were victims of the terrible curse of their warrior god.

There were said to be women who could call down birds from the sky in battle and the spirits that took their valiant dead to their afterlife.

There were those who could call the spirit of the wolf or the bear or the boar to them in battle so that the animal possessed them giving them the eyes and teeth and claws of the beast, and some of the stories said that they could even become wolves or bears or boars.

He wanted to see the Osmanli sand-people of the East, who lived in golden palaces and grew rye and barley and wheat on their river plains which flooded every winter, and carried the grain along the river to the main city of the Republic, Beacon Hills, using it instead of gold to pay for the Republic’s upkeep.

He knew how to perform, and how to stand and how to dance and even though he had never been touched, and was kept sequestered so that he didn't have heats, but Lord Argent was busy with the border tribes to the North so he was left, trained and virginal, with no alphas even allowed near him in case they triggered his heat.

He lived in a room rich with luxury but where two walls were those of a large wooden cage. He was kept safe, protected for Lord Argent.

And he was about to be scolded for his curiosity.

Again.

They didn’t have men who could turn into wolves in the Republic.

Those that served the true gods were never cursed with such things.

If they were cursed it was always to the betterment of the Republic.

Everything was for the Republic so it could survive long after they were dead.

Jennifer had gotten the keys from her belt and it never went well for Stiles when she came into his room. She carried a thick leather strap from her belt that she used both to polish her knife and to whip across Stiles’ legs if he was willfully disobedient.

Most of the time he would be chastised and shamed into behavior, but she had permission to use the strop if she felt it was necessary.

The only times she had used it- it was too thick to break the skin but he was sure that it could break his ribs if she used it on his side- was if he was persistent about learning what happened outside his room.

Lord Argent wanted him unscarred or he was sure that she would have beaten him bloody the one time he had left the room. He had taken advantage of his size at the time to slip through the holes in the cage wall and was halfway to the main parts of the palace where the slaves were at work before she caught him with her hand on the back of his neck, and he had spent days in bed weeping in pain from what she had done.

Yet she was also kind when he was unwell.

She brought him his meals and she loved him.

She had been the one to train him.

She made sure that his cadences were perfect; his posture; his skin.

He loved and hated her in equal measure, and was comforted to know that she would be allowed to retire to a country manor when Lord Argent returned because Stiles was finally old enough to serve.

If she came into his cage when she was about her service then he was going to be punished.

As he tried to climb down the stool he was stood on lost what tenuous balance it had maintained and fell out from under him causing him to grab at the grille to stop himself landing heavily on the marble floor. “I guess this is where you tell me about climbing because I might fall.” He said rubbing his hand over his head and looking at the floor.

“We are leaving," she said bluntly. From a hook by the door, she pulled a heavy velvet cloak that he had been fitted for and was to be used for his presentation to Lord Argent. It was heavy black silk and wool, polished smooth before weaving and as soft as any fabric that he had touched before.

“Am I to be presented?” Stiles asked, gathering up a few things from the room until his arms were full and scrolls fell from them to clatter between his legs on the floor.

This room had been his world since he was a child, and was barely able to feed himself. He knew that he wouldn’t return so there were things he wanted to take with him. Whenever he had asked Jennifer about when it would happen she had ducked the question.

“What have I told you about asking questions?” The way she said it it was not a question of itself but a threat. If he didn't do what he was told she would bring out the strop.

She looked at the bundle of things in his arms, “leave your things," she said, “the Wulver are too close to the palace for anyone’s liking, we are being evacuated. You are valuable, boy, your things are not, now come here.”

Stiles let his things fall to the floor with a clatter, except the carved wooden wolfthat he had carried with him his entire life. After running his fingers over the wood he tucked into his girdle. It was one of the very few things he had taken with him from his parents, and Stiles suspected it would have been thrown away with the rest of his things had he not kept it hidden; The Republic had toys, he heard it in Jennifer’s voice, toys can be replaced.

Seeing that moment of hesitation that Stiles had gone through Jennifer chastised him. “Do you realize what will happen if the Wulver catch you?"

Stiles did know. She had spent his life telling him. He knew specifica details of what all the other peoples in the world would do to him because he was an omega. The Wulver would use him as a hole. They would spend their seed in him and tear him up on their monstrous animal cocks. They would then use him as he lay bleeding, passing them amongst themselves until the blood loss killed him, and even then they’d use him until he was cold.

The Ulfbär, the bear warriors, would not even be so kind. Once he was cold they would eat him up believing that his flesh would cure illnesses.

The Republic was protecting its citizenry by destroying them. They were animals masquerading as men and deserved to be treated no better than such.

With an invocation to the goddess, Valia, he touched his fingertips to his gorget. It was the collar that marked him in service to Lord Argent. It was a tall silver ring around his throat that was made of jointed parts and lined with suede that almost completely covered his neck, and under it, hanging from the front on twin rings over his collarbones, was a half-moon of plate embossed with a running wolf surrounded by arrows - the crest of House Argent.

It was a reminder of how blessed he was, for the collar itself was both exquisitely made and expensive and he had not simply been branded and given a steel collar. Jennifer had taught him to take pride and comfort in his collar, it was a mark of how charmed the life that he led was. It was a memory of how Valia held him in her thoughts.

He was given the best of food and chiton made of the finest fabrics, his sandals were measured and fitted against his leg, not just straw tied to his feet, and he wore the gorget of the finest lord of the Republic so that everyone who saw him knew what he was and who he served. What did it matter if the fabric left him cold in the long dark nights or the gorget rubbed blisters and sores, many would kill to be in the position that he was.

Along with the wooden wolf, the gorget was his most prized possession.

Stiles had come from one of the territories of the Republic, Zbravika, and he had been brought, as little more than a baby, through the Republic to Beacon Hills and raised in this cage room knowing his purpose and the Republican gods. He was as much a child of the Republic as any born there. He knew his place and he knew his purpose - but he still wanted to know.

His curiosity would be the death of him.

Jennifer pulled the cloak, trimmed in black sable, around his shoulders and pulled the hood up over his head, “follow me closely, keep your eyes down and your mouth shut, and we shall get you to Lord Argent and out of the reach of the Wulver barbarians.”

She was wearing a cloak of rose-colored velvet, and her brooches were embossed with the same crest of the running wolf. Her dress was held in place by a girdle of gold leather that crisscrossed over her ribs and belly before falling in pleats around her bare legs. The same gold leather was braided and stitched into her hair.

Jennifer was lovely. She had a small birdlike beauty like she might shatter from any cruelty. She seemed small and innocent and without a single thought of harm although she stood as tall as a man. It was a facade built upon her cold malice.

Jennifer was a good beta lady of the Republic, and as casual in her cruelty as the creatures in the Arena as they tore apart the convicts - and no less lovely. She was said to be the lover of many influential people in the Quorum. She was also one of the very few people Stiles ever encountered. There were a few slaves who brought him food and sometimes gossip, but they all fled from Jennifer.

After she was sure that his hood was covering his face she stepped into his room and took the leather satchel that carried his box, and handed it to the slave who accompanied her. She had always treated them as both indispensable and invisible and this boy was no exception. He was expected to put it on under the cloak that she had given him, but had not told him to expect that so he had to fuss with the pin holding the cloak closed at his neck, a spear of polished wood, pull the strap over his head and one arm and walk, all whilst trying not to stab himself with the pin or ruin the fabric.

By the way that she reacted, walking out down the corridor making sure that both of them were following at the proper amount of steps behind her, she had set the order of seniority where the satchel and its contents were clearly more valuable than the boy carrying them.

Stiles knew what was in the box. It was the articles that had been used for his training, sea glass dildos and plugs for his ass, there were rings for his penis, and a device that made his cock the same size as that of a beta - male omega, contrary to popular rumour, did have a penis it was just under-developed.

Sets such as the one that he had often included such things but it would not be used. No Lord of the Republic would deign to use such a device, but if Stiles was expected to perform with another for his master’s service - an act he had been told would be unlikely for Lord Argent did not like to share - they would wear the device so that they could not spill their seed inside him, for it would cap their penis like a thimble.

If Stiles was to bear a child in Lord Argent's service there would be no question as to its parentage.

Although Argent would provide for him regardless- a child would make sure that he was kept very well indeed. It was the difference between a villa in the country and a manor house. As such his patron would certainly want to make sure of his fidelity.

Stiles had always struggled to keep his thoughts on track and now was no different. He knew that he should be scared or excited or something, but instead, his mind was all over the place.

It had been nearly ten years since he had walked the halls of the palace. Even then he had been a child who had escaped, and when he was bonded- when he had been knotted in his first heat- he would be safe to walk the halls of the palace, secure that every time he was knotted Argent would reinforce his claim, and given time away from his alpha the bond would fade and he would be free to keep his favours for himself, if it was not during his time of service when he would be returned to his cage.

But Argent wouldn’t bite him. The gorget made sure of it.

When an omega was bitten- when the gland that rose during heat was triggered- his body would change so that his scent would be offputting to alphas other than his own. It would also put a compulsion on the omega to find and please their alpha, and on the alpha to protect the omega.

It was not a thing that could be countenanced for the Dictator for Life of the Republic.

The smoke stained the air, simultaneously muffling and carrying the eerie howls of the Wulver and the deeper roars of the Ulfbär through the night. There were screams and the cracking pop and growl of the fires outside. “We never thought they’d cross the river," Jennifer muttered, “we never thought that they’d dare.” She was leading him through the hallways, Stiles didn't pay attention to them, to the tapestries and statues portraying the life of Lord Argent, and other arts that he had commissioned. This included busts of the previous omega who had served the Republic through service to the Argent House.

As a child, when he had escaped, he had been fascinated by them, and the names underneath them. They had been draped in fabulous gems from other countries and furs, treated as well in death as they had been in life. There would come a time when Stiles’ likeness would join those in these hallways. The torches were half unlit in their braziers, and gates that would normally be locked against the night were open. There were people running about and guards with swords as they ran towards the fire.

“Come," Jennifer said snatching Stiles’ wrist, “stupid boy," she continued, “I should leave you behind before you get us both killed,” she was so angry that her spittle was splattering against his face, “did you smoke poppies in that cage? Do you know what the Wulver will do to you if they catch you? What will they do to both of us? They are simply animals in human skin, they tear it away to reveal their fur, is that what you want?”

“Madam," the slave said, reaching out towards her but he did not dare to touch her, “the horses are waiting, you are correct, we must be as swift as possible." As he said it he kept his eyes on the floor, making sure that she knew that he was repeating her instructions so that he was not overstepping his authority. There were those who would not mind it on such an occasion but Jennifer was not one of those.

In a flourish of her cloak that she had probably perfected over years of seductions and carefully scripted tantrums, and still holding Stiles tight by the wrist, she stomped down the hallway towards the stables.

 

 

—

 

 

As an explosion rocked the field outside the fallen walls, where the two forces were smashing together in waves, back and forth like waves against rocks, with hollering and yelling and the dying screams of horses and men alike, when the woman in the feathered cloak found them in the stables. In a second she had thrown back the fabric and feathers to reveal boiled leather armor underneath and unsheathed a short steel sword with a hiss.

She barked out commands but Stiles did not know what it was she said. He moved in front of the slave, using his hand to push the boy further behind him. He wasn’t sure why he had done it but the woman noticed it.

She was lovely, he noticed, for a wild thing, with bronze colored hair tied up in a net of braids and stitched to her scalp with silk ribbons dyed indigo. Her skin was pale, and a square jaw framed a face with a soft pink mouth and large green eyes, darkened with kohl, applied coarsely on her upper lids. She had a raven’s skull on a thong about her neck and a line of tattoos, small sticks joined together that ran down the side of her neck into her cuirass and across her collarbone.

In the Republic she would have been considered a great beauty, praised among others for her rare bronze coloured hair and wide green eyes, but there was a smear of blood on her cheek, and she was dangerous in a way that was very different from Jennifer, who had, as the woman appeared, changed her entire mien.

When she had thought the hooded figure was a man that she could seduce to gain her freedom, she had, with subtle, practised, gestures, adjusted her cloak to show her breasts, and when she had learned it was a woman her hand moved to the knife she had at the small of her back.

A man appeared in the doorway, like the woman he wore boiled leathers that were woven together in strips that were held shut with rivets, over grey wool and leather pants that were splashed in blood. Some waxy black substance was around his eyes and down unto his cheeks which were heavily scarred and it gave his blue eyes a metallic sheen that matched the blade of his axe which he held in a low hand. The left side of his face and neck was scarred from fire, almost like molten wax instead of skin.

Most terrifyingly he wore the entire fur of a wolf, with the head of it pinned to his hair and the legs draped over his shoulders. He said something to the woman and Stiles took a step back, trying not to make a noise, and to push the slave into the shadows.

The woman in the feather cloak noticed it for her eyes narrowed and she said something to the man. Jennifer turned to him, making sure to showcase herself. She was a woman who had spent her life using her beauty to gain power, and even with the knife that she was poorly concealing from them, she was attempting it.

The man said something to the woman, hard consonants and a sort of bar bar noise and then he struck Jennifer hard across the face with the butt of his axe, sending her flying into the straw in a sprawl of limbs.

"I’m unarmed," Stiles blurted out, but it was obvious that they had no idea what he had said.

The woman crossed to him in a few steps, her feathery cloak did not billow prettily, like he might have imagined that it would, but gave a rough susurrus that sounded like sheaves of reed paper rubbed together. She grabbed at the pin holding Stiles’ cloak shut, feeling the soft fabric through gloves that the fingertips of which were absent, but her fingertips were dyed black, and, pulling out the pin through the ring, and revealed him in his chiton and gorget underneath.

She said something to her companion, and her voice had lost the harshness it had with Jennifer. She had a voice that sounded like she stood over a fire and spent her days breathing in smoke.

As she had moved towards Stiles he had taken a half step back and used his arms to frame the boy behind him. He was just a kid, a slave, and he didn't have any choice.

Stiles was a prize, he could be ransomed or murdered as an example to the Republic, he understood that and although it felt like his bowels had turned to water they were going to have to go through him to get to the boy.

He brought up his hand and fussed with the gorget, trying to find the latch so he could pull it free. It was large and solid silver. It could be melted down and reused. It was valuable. “Take it and let the boy go,” he said, looking between them. He couldn’t find the latch. He had never taken it off. He had never been allowed to. He could always claim that they had stolen it. The Wulver were barbarians. They couldn't contradict him. They didn't even speak the same language.

The man said something, and his smile flashed his teeth, bright and white, and Stiles finished the step back he was taking.

The woman shook her head at the display, as if she wasn’t surprised but that the whole thing was cliched and embarrassing, then she reached into the pouch on her belt, and pulled something out in her fist. As she opened her fingers to flatten her hand she took a deep breath and blew, scattering the purple powder in Stiles’ face. He blinked once, twice, and then collapsed into the straw, the slave underneath him.

 

 

—

 

 

“He’s an omega,” Lydia, the woman in the raven cloak, said to Peter, the man in the wolf skin, “and they have him collared like a common dog.”

“Less of the dog comments, my love,” he said, it was almost a reflex now, “you know how thin skinned we can be.”

“There is no shame in being a dog," she answered with practiced grace as she walked across to the pair of young men, “a dog knows how to heel.”

Peter laughed as he picked up the woman in the pink dress over his shoulder; she would be unconscious for some time yet, and they had an hour before her powders wore off the two boys.

“Did you see," she continued as she pulled out the pin that latched the boy’s gorget, pulling off the collar and throwing it across the stable, “he was more interested in saving the slave than himself.”

“He looked fit to shit himself,” Peter said, bouncing on his feet to make sure the woman's weight was set. “I was determined to not smell anything happening, between that and the woman's knife,” he had stuffed the blade into his belt when Lydia had started talking, “I wasn't paying attention, he didn't seem as dangerous.”

“It’s just strange," she said, frowning at the blisters and scars that marred the boy's neck and collarbone. Some of them were old scars, and it gave her the impression that the collar had only been removed to apply salve to the wounds. “A Lord of the Republic that gave a shit about a slave.”

“Is the boy carrying their wealth?” Lydia turned the omega over into the straw, to see what the slave, recognizable by his rough clothes and poor cloak, was carrying, and revealed the wooden box that he had carried.

On seeing the contents she laughed out loud. “I’m sure they’d be valuable for someone,” she latched the box closed again, sliding it back into the satchel, which she picked up. She lacked the strength to carry them, but there were plenty of Wulver about.

 

 

—

 

 

It had looked like the Republic was going to win the battle, but the sunset had brought with it a northern wind that remembered snow and Lydia could have smelled it as strongly as if she had been on the ice-floes and steppes that the Wulver called home. The wind was rich with promise and threat, and her Wulver, Peter, was pinned and down with a Republican foot-soldier stood over him with his axe raised so she put her hand to the raven skull she wore around her neck and the sky erupted.

The clouds split with thunder like the hoofbeats of the Night Parade of a Thousand Demons who rode the wind on the solstice bringing the storm to recover the lost dead.

She could feel their power blazing through her like she had been struck by lightning and the ground exploded in front of her as she moved her hand, smashing into the front rank foot soldiers of the Republic.

They had gone down like trees when the earth and rock cut into them like the blades of a woodcutter’s axe. Some of them screamed but it only lasted for a moment before the earth swallowed them up with a rumbling crunch.

The second rank broke as spikes of ice fell from the sky and Lydia felt the raven rise in her, forcing herself letting go of the seductive power before it consumed her.

She was seiðr, an instrument of the Raven's will, and the power made her feel strong. But the instant it was gone- the clouds dissipating to reveal the stars bright and sharp in the sky- she remembered the power and she wanted it back. She felt empty and drained and vulnerable without it.

Only the strongest were chosen to be trained as seiðr because the power consumed those who lacked the strength.

As Lydia was a Raven seiðr she was empowered by death. In a battle as more died was the strongest that she could be, and surrounded by it she felt like a god. It was only the grace of the Raven God, Linor, and the presence of Peter that she remained human.

Many submitted to be trained as seiðr, but it was rare that there was more than one that completed the training and gave themselves over to the animal that chose them as their own.

Lydia was the Raven and the Raven was Lydia, and the Raven had chosen Peter to anchor itself in her. He was her guard, her sword and shield, although he preferred the axe like most Wulver, he was her light in the darkness, and when he had fallen in battle, which the idiot had done once, she had drawn him back to her and her disappointment in him. He would not escape her so easily.

Her Alpha had been proud of what she had done on the field in the battle against the Republic soldiers. He used the fear that had rolled over the enemy foot soldiers as a call to arms. His wolves and soldiers rushed the broken line of the Republic, whooping and howling and following their charge with the blades of their axes.

It had been exactly as the Raven had wanted, the wolves feasting on the Republic soldiers even as the soil covered the bodies of their fellows and the Raven glutting itself on the death.

The power was dangerous.

It could consume her.

The more she used it the more that she wanted to use it and the more she wanted to use it the more of herself was lost to the Raven.

The others who trained as seiðr hadn’t failed - they’d lost themselves. They took the form of their totem and went into the forest never to return.

She had Peter. He was strong where she could not be, and that was enough. It had to be.

But sometimes the skies sang to her and her body felt heavy, unwieldy and strange to her and that was when Peter brought her a cup of quince and pear cider and some food, sitting down beside her and bumping against her shoulder.

He always knew.

He kept her safe.

That was their bond.

There was no Lydia without the raven, but in the Raven, there was no Lydia.

Lydia served Linor and Linor served the Raven, and as part of her service, she served her Alpha.

On the battlefield. Derek was a figure of legend, he stood proud and howling, beating the side of his axe against the buckle of his pauldron in a percussion to urge his Wulver on, howling with him, loud enough and cold enough to turn the Republic soldiers blood to ice in their veins.

To Lydia, it had always sounded like fire and home and safety. It was the sound of the far North, and it made her feel safe when it hung on the air.

Her Alpha was angry, and rightfully so.

He would have justice this night.

The Republic had been stealing Wulver and Ulfbär land for generations. The Wulver were nomadic, herding their sheep and goats across the open lands that were their own; the Ulfbär kept mostly to the mountains. They were tribes that had their own languages and cultures but the cities they carried on the backs of their oxen.

Once a year they met to trade and had games to show which tribe was best at things. It prevented any out and out battles between them. There would be drunken fights, any group of young men gathered with any degree of differing loyalties would have fights, but mostly these were channeled into something healthier, and then the young bravos would show off their battle wounds to the unimpressed ladies and omega of their tribes.

The Republic had just kept moving their boundaries, taking bites of the Wulver and Ulfbär land and surrounding it by walls, or worse, encouraging their people to domesticate and farm the land. They set up fences and trained their dogs to protect the land that they had snatched and then called in the Republic soldiers whenever the Wulver tried to graze on the land they had held for as long as any could remember.

The Republic shouted in their senate about the bandit Wulver. They tried to make it clear that they were animals wearing human skin but did not truly understand what that meant- they saw it as a detriment and not a blessing.

For over a hundred years they had snatched land like that, building villages and farms and roads and murdering the Wulver who objected- so the Wulver raided the Republican farms.

Why would they not?

They were built on stolen land after all.

Then the Argent family had taken the Republic for their own, electing Gerard the Dictator for Life, and the years of nibbling away at the pack lands were swapped out for a full-scale invasion and the slaughter of any of the tribes that they encountered. They had left their bodies out for the scavengers bringing sickness to both the Wulver and the Republican homesteaders.

Her previous Alpha, Talia, had tried negotiation, she had gathered her tribes into a city in the North but the Republic just burned it to the ground with the Alpha inside.

The new Alpha, Talia’s only remaining child, gathered both the Wulver and the Ulfbär into an army that swept down through the Republican lands burning down everything on the way. They tried to avoid killing farmers and civilians for they were often as much a victim of the Republic as the Wulver were.

For the past year they had moved against the Republic’s capital of Beacon Hills with its marble palaces and the Republican army was spread so wide over the vast empire that Argent had built they could not defend it.

And now Beacon Hills was burning and they were raiding Argent's own palace. The last six years had been hard but the Republic knew now how Wolves always avenged their own.

Her Alpha, Derek, found her in the room that clearly had belonged to the omega.

The scent of him was thick on everything, but one wall was heavy oak beams forming a lattice and cage wall, there were wooden bars over the tiny window that was at the top of the back wall, but everything was marble and velvet and covered in expensive tapestries. It was a beautiful room but it was clearly a prison.

A golden cage was still a cage.

“An omega?" Derek asked. He was a handsome man with dark hair that he kept cut short, and a neatly trimmed beard. There was a smear of blood across the bridge of his nose that he seemed unaware of. He was wearing black leathers and furs, stitched tight to his skin but it did not look as hardened as that Peter wore. He had strapped both of his war axes across his back so that the heads were at each shoulder. “I thought that they murdered them on principle.”

“Clearly not,” Lydia said, “I knocked him out and laid him out in Argent's treasure room. He was wearing this.” From her belt, she unhooked and threw him the gorget. It was sheets of flattened silver fixed to a suede base with a half moon hanging underneath so that it would sit on the collarbone prettily.

Derek caught it out of the air and held it out in his hands, examining the workmanship in order to control his temper. “Like a fucking dog," she sneered, “he tried to save the slave carrying his things. It surprised me. I thought that they were selfish. Not one of them would think like Pack.”

“But he did,” Derek said, lifting one of the scrolls on the low desk, there was a cushion in front of it for the omega to sit on. He gave the paper a cursory look and then threw it back down.

The Republican language was unintelligible, all soft syllables that sounded like honey and cloyed in the mouth. By the same token, Lydia knew that the Republicans for all their bragging about culture and education never bothered to learn the languages of the countries that they subjugated.

“He did,” she admitted, “you said we’d offer the protection of pack to the slaves. Does that include him?”

He paused for a moment in his disinterested look through the omega’s belongings, “I don't know," he said, “let me think about it, I would hate to bring a snake into our Heartlands.”

“You are a wolf," she told him, taking a half step back so that she could drop her head in a half bow, “you will take any snake and shake it till its death. Isn't that the lesson, you kill a snake by cutting it off the tail - just behind the head.”

 

 

—

 

 

Derek approached Argent’s treasure room to find that Peter tried to bar him access, “you don't want to go in there," he told him.

Peter was Derek's uncle and held a unique position in the pack by being the wolf to their seiðr. It allowed him a freedom that no other did but it was still unacceptable to bar the Alpha entry to anything, and Derek addressed that with a look.

Much of the communication between the Wulver was non-verbal. The animals beneath their skin were able to express themselves as comfortably with small gestures. Derek pushed past him and opened the heavy iron-clad door to be hit with a wall of heat scent.

The room was large with red marble that was veined with white that made it look like beef, and capped with copper bands that were polished to resemble gold. There were chests and piles of coin, a few metal cups that were clearly too valuable for everyday use, and there, tied with his arms behind one of the pillars was the omega.

He was lovely, still slightly rounded with youth, and had eyes that were beta gold as the firelight reflected in them. His mouth was a soft pink, constantly wetted by the flickering tip of a tongue, as sweat ran down his face. He wore a white linen chiton fastened at each shoulder with an electrum brooch and held tight at his waist with an embossed girdle. He had lovely legs one of which was folded underneath him. His dark hair was wet and he couldn't help the way that he was moving, twisting and writhing in his bonds as heat burned through him.

“He wasn't in heat when we caught him," Peter said behind him, “it just started, I think we triggered it.”

Derek felt like his teeth were too large in his mouth and his cock felt heavy in his pants, unable to prevent the instinctive reaction his body felt to an omega in heat.

They must have kept the boy sequestered, Derek thought if the presence of alphas triggered his heat like this, but he was lovely, and the strength of his scent was overwhelming, cloying and heavy in the air.

Derek pushed past Peter, shoving his uncle out of the way, opening the door and stepping inside the treasure room.

The boy was awake and babbling, but Derek couldn't make out a word he said as he walked closer. The scent was almost thick enough to chew. It was like the sweet gravy of freshly roasted meat that caused his mouth to fill with saliva, and his wolf forced itself through his teeth, his face shifting to accommodate the change. The boy’s scent didn't change- there was no sharp metal fear stink- just the overwhelming taste of heat and desire, and warmth and salt and sweat.

Derek was not an animal.

His beast did not control him.

But he could not stop the change.

And the boy stretched for him. He showed off that lovely line of throat and collarbone and shoulder, and Derek wanted.

He was muttering the word Elskende into the skin next to his mouth over and over.

The taste of blood and sweat and hot skin filled his mouth as he pressed his hardness against the omega who wanted, who desired, who was hot and slick and yearning.

He fell to his knees hard enough that it hurt when they struck the marble, but his body was acting on its own. The wolf wanted and the man saw no reason not to take, not with the smell of heat in his nostrils and the taste of blood in his mouth.

He knee-walked closer and the boy spread his legs, his slick shining on his naked thighs.

“May Selune forgive me," Peter muttered and blew a handful of Lydia’s purple dust in their faces.

 

 

—

 

 

Derek woke up on a large silk cushion filled with down that seemed to breathe with his movements. He ached all over like he had spent the night drinking heavily and possibly fighting, as he moved in a way that made sure that he had all of his limbs, fingers, and toes. He didn't sit up as he scrubbed his hand through his hair. It felt gritty with dirt and old blood. It formed a dark line under his fingernails and he thought it was weird that he had retired without washing.

He hated the idea of going to bed dirty, he had always washed in some way, if not a full bath in front of the fire, then certainly with a bucket of water and soap. Although his cuirass and boots had been removed he still wore his bracers and pants.

After scrubbing at his hair he scratched at his chest. His skin felt wrong like it belonged to someone else and his wolf was shifting under his flesh like some great beast like it didn't fit and it wanted to burst free.

To make matters worse his entire crotch ached like he had been kicked there, something that had not happened since he was pubescent and experiencing rut for the first time.

He rolled to the side of the cushion and got to his feet, stretching his arms up above him listening to his shoulders crack and pop deliciously.

The cushion was comfortable but it had no support for his back and it was too large to bring back with them to the far north.

“So you’re awake,” Peter said, he was sat on a chair across the room, he still wore his armor, “do you remember what happened?”

“We took Beacon Hills,” Derek said, and tipped up the bronze ewer beside his uncle into a cup. It was full of cold fresh water. There was fruit as well. It was a luxury in the far north and it seemed that Peter had no intention of resisting the temptation to gorge himself on it.

It only surprised Derek that Peter had not hoarded it for Lydia.

“We were raiding the Argent palace,” Peter suggested, Derek didn't say anything, he just drank the water, emptying the cup in a few swallows then refilling it. “Argent had an omega, we triggered his heat,” Derek said nothing. “You bit him, I drugged you because you were at the fall of your pants.”

Derek remembered it, the feel of the boy resting on his thighs, the taste of his blood in his mouth, even in memory the scent of him was intoxicating.

With his head clearer, he was able to consider everything, including the ramifications of what he had done. He cursed under his breath. “Do we even know his name?”

Peter shook his head, “no one speaks his language,” he said, “we've left him with his body slave, not that she realizes that she has been freed, Lydia is with him now.”

Derek nodded, “I’ll need a bath,” he said quietly, “I don't think I should introduce myself to my new mate covered in the blood of his people.”

“His captors,” Peter corrected. “They kept him caged and collared like an animal, fucking slavers, they're less than the damned.”

Derek cursed them under his breath, taking a half peach from Peter’s platter and biting into it savoring the sweet cloying juice that reminded him of the omega’s heat stink. If his mouth was full he was not expected to talk.

 

 

—

 

 

Stiles scratched at the collar that the woman had put on him. It felt so strange and unnatural on him. He felt feverish and hot and itchy like his skin was covered in ants. His chiton was damp with sweat and felt like it was made of hessian and was irritating his skin.

He wanted to cry out, but the woman, the witch, was watching him. She was sat picking at a plate of food and was drinking wine from a golden cup with as much care as if she was supping beer from a clay mug.

Stiles wanted.

He just wasn't that sure what it was that he wanted.

He had screamed and cried and yelled for his alpha. He had come. He had. And Stiles had been willing and it didn't matter that he didn't know who it was, Stiles had called to Valia and she had sent him.

Stiles had gone into heat for him, and the gland in his throat had swollen for the alpha to bite into and then before he knotted him they had drugged them both.

Didn't they understand - he hurt!

He ached inside like he had been hollowed out, and he didn't want her damp rags, which she had tried to lay across his forehead. He wanted his alpha.

He knew his body was acting on its own but what was there except the need that ached within him. He was even aware on some levels that he was in heat but he had been abandoned and his skin was like fire and he couldn’t think.

He was on fire, burning like the city, and he wanted.

He wanted so damn much.

The witch had made him drink, and he had spilled most of the water down his front. Jennifer had always been derisive of his heats. She told him it would make him little more than a cat shrieking for a knot. She had always taken the opportunity to remind him that his body would serve, even if he didn’t; that he would be lost to the want, and on some level, he hadn't believed her. Jennifer was cruel and she lied and she was jealous, why wouldn't she lie about that too?

He wanted his box. He had things in the box that would ease this. He wanted his alpha. He wanted to show his alpha the things in his box. He wanted his alpha to use the things in his box on him. It would make him feel less empty and sloppy.

It felt like he had stuffed a wet rag between his butt cheeks.

The witch had tied his hands above his head, and his ankles together so he could get no relief. He couldn't even turn over and rut against the mattress.

They had collared him. They had taken Argent’s gorget and replaced it with something cold. There was a stone hung in his supra-sternal notch, and it was banging against his collarbone every time he moved.

He was aware that the Wulver outside were celebrating, their rout had turned into a massive festival, with whooping and yelling and laughter, and he understood it. They were full of joy and desire and their fear and violence turned to jubilation and lust.

He burned like Beacon Hills and he wanted.

He wanted his Alpha as much as they did.

The witch was not his alpha. She was unmoved by the insults that he flung at her, and she didn't bring him his alpha. What use was she if she could not ease the burning within him?

 

 

—

 

 

“We gave the boy your carcanet," Peter told Derek as he stood near the locked door of the room that held the omega. “The law is the law, Alpha," he said the word to make sure that although he understood that Derek massively outranked him within their pack he knew Derek would have to accede. Peter was an alpha, but Derek was both alpha and Alpha. It didn't mean much to the Wulver hierarchy that a person was an alpha, but the Alpha led their civilization.

Peter had triggered the boy’s heat, unknowingly for they had no way of knowing that he had been kept hidden away from alphas who would have allowed his heats to start naturally and be controlled, but it was Derek who had bitten him.

Before they had sacked the city Derek had made it clear that rape was not acceptable, and a mating bite would be honored, it didn't matter that he had made the law, he was just as bound by it. Every alpha worked to buy a carcanet, a specialized collar that was as fine as they could afford. When they mated they gave their mate the necklace as a proof of their fidelity. The carcanet also served to prevent another biting their mate, and people who did not wish to be mated would wear leather around their neck to prevent them being bitten when they were enjoying sex, or even sharing a heat, although omega were rarer now. The Republic made a point of executing them on principle.

They always had been hypocrites, Derek thought, looking at the boy through the grate in the door, at the way he twisted and the filigree of silver on his skin, with the heavy bead of amber batting against his collarbones as he bucked against his constraints.

Derek had set a law and it applied to him as well. The Republic had one law for their citizens and another for its nobility. The Wulver had not shared their hypocrisies.

Derek’s mother had been the Alpha when Derek had gotten the carcanet. He had hunted solo for three seasons to get enough pelts to trade with one of the tribes who raided the Republic to buy the carcanet. It was made of gold twined like vines with a piece of amber from distant Rus as large as his thumbnail. It was a promise of fidelity and worth in their culture. The years of hard work to earn it serves to show just how valued the alpha found their mate.

Derek had to admit that it looked good on the boy.

“There’s only a few hours left on his heat, we think,” Peter said, “if you want to go in there, Lydia’s doing her best to keep his scent under control, if you think you can resist I’ll open the door.”

“I could order you to," Derek said, as his mouth filled with saliva at the memory of the boy’s taste in his mouth.

“You won’t,” Peter said, “you aren't that type of Alpha.”

The hunger within him, however, told him that he very much was that type of alpha. He could open that door and give the boy what his body was asking for so sweetly. Taking a deep breath of the scent that the boy was giving off. He turned and walked away- sure it was the hardest thing that he had ever done.

Behind him, through the door, the boy called out, and Derek wavered, Selune help him he wavered, but he did not turn back.

 

 

—

 

 

With the omega worn out and asleep Lydia felt confident leaving him with only a guard on the door, he would be given the same freedom as any other member of the tribe, but now with the heat stink still close about him, he might be attacked. There were a few Republican soldiers left, little pockets of resistance who held minor outposts around the city, and with their blood up from the fighting some of the tribe might be inappropriate. Lydia was sure that they would not touch the boy, but it might make him more uncomfortable than Derek wanted him.

He was the omega to the tribe’s Alpha, the Elskende, the one who would be treated like he was an Alpha in his own right, but the tribe wouldn’t know that unless they recognised Derek's Carcanet, which most of them would not have ever seen, or Derek formally presented him which he would probably do before they quit the city.

Sacking Beacon Hills had never been about keeping the territory.

But now, with the boy asleep, still bound at the wrists, his ankles undone, Lydia was free to find her Peter and rest herself.

She always knew where Peter was, it was part of the magic that bound them together, and she knew he would not have gone to bed without her. Sometimes the bond between a seiðr and their wolf was non-sexual, just as often it was, but Lydia found such comfort in Peter’s arms that she found it almost impossible to sleep without him. Even his snores didn't disturb her.

He was in one of the fine bedrooms, or what she assumed was a bedroom, because surrounded by braziers and with a fine net hanging over it was a large pillow, like the one that she had left the omega on. It surprised her that Peter was not already on the pillow, buried under the furs, waiting for her. He was on his knees in front of a large chest and snickering to himself at the contents.

The doors were covered in bronze plates that were covered in designs, “look,” Peter said, grinning like a child as he held aloft a mass of fabric. There was not much that Lydia could say about it except that it was sheer, she could see through most of the panels where there were many layers and dyed a soft pink. She could tell that there were some embroidered and beaded pieces because she could make out the stiffer fabric but the design or shape was beyond her.

Safe in his presence and exhausted, both from using her power and sitting watching over the boy. She had had the chance to cat nap but not much more, and now she was ready for bed. She started to unbuckle her cuirass. Peter had always found it hilarious that among the very first things she did when she was able to undress was reach under whatever blouse or shirt she was wearing to undo the laces of her tuttensack and then shaking her freed bosoms.

A tuttensack was a linen contraption with pockets that held and supported her breasts, which were often fixed in place and despite admitting how much easier it made her life, and many of the women in the tribes considered them next to godhood and clearly a gift of Selune, the wolf goddess of the moon, every one of them was glad to take it off. At some point in her life Lydia had mastered the art of untying it before she had removed everything else.

He loved it about her.

It reminded him that she was a powerful goddess with her red hair lashing in the winds of her own magic, and a perfectly human woman whose breasts got uncomfortable when they were bound down for too long.

“What is it?” she asked, taking the pins from her hair and dropping them on to the table.

“It’s an entire shipment of Osmanli gowns, the sort worn by their ladies," he was as amused as a child by the find. Osmanli women probably didn’t wear the clothes that they did in stories, made of fabric as fine as a human breath beaded with coins that jingled when they walked barefoot on their hot sands. If these dresses were Osmanli, which Lydia doubted, they were designed for people who wanted to dress the way that they did in the stories. Lydia was sure that actual Osmanli women would dress normally. “I think this would look lovely on you.” He stood up holding the dress out to his own figure - he had removed his armor and wore only his leather pants and linen shirt - and had the dress in front of him holding the shoulders of it to his own shoulders so he could display the shape of it.

The gown was lovely. It was a rose pink colour which absolutely did not suit her colouring, and gathered under the breasts with thicker fabric that laced up the sides to fit the wearer particularly, and a long skirt, but the sleeves were two long panels of entirely sheer fabric, and the skirt was the same fabric and like the sleeves unstitched. There was only the gathered fabric at the shoulders, which was beaded with the same detail and gold beads as the corset, that was stitched. The corset gave the outfit structure and definition, and was in itself sheer, but was framed by a gold beaded braid that went under the breasts, and under the waist in a dipped vee that fell into a loose belt. The sleeves fell past his feet.

“It’s just your color," she said, running her fingers through her hair.

“It's not my size,” Peter said, and his tone made it sound that he was upset about that, “I wondered how it would look on you,” he was almost purring, and in another life perhaps she would have put the dress on for him, but she was tired and cold and the last thing she wanted to do was put on something else, and they would be back in the Heartlands of the tribe before she’d be in that place in her own head and then the snow would be coming and it would be absolutely inappropriate. She’d freeze to death unless in their longhouse, which she had as a seiðr, but she mostly travelled with the tribe and used a yurt like they did, was on fire.

She sat down to unlace her boots that she could take them off. She was exhausted, “give them to the omega,” she said flippantly, “he might get use out of them.”

“But," he held aloft a white bodice, there was no dress attached, with billowing sleeves, “this one has bells on it.” He was clearly trying not to laugh as he squatted in front of the chest and waggling his eyebrows in a mock leer.

“Be off with you, wolf," she said peeling off her pants, “and take your dingly danglers with you.”

Peter laughed so hard he tipped himself over and fell ass first on the marble which just made him laugh harder. If she hadn't been so tired she might have appreciated it, as it was she just crawled into the bed, as Peter cackled and repeated “dingly danglers” to himself.

“Come to bed, wolf," she said holding out her arms to him, she was exhausted and just wanted to sleep.

Peter skinned out of his clothes and then climbed in beside her. “I've brought my dingly dangler," he said with another exaggerated leer. But she was too tired to laugh at him, just buried her face into his chest and finally let herself sleep.

 

 

—

 

 

When Stiles woke it took a few moments to regain his wits. He was in a different room, one that he did not recognize, and he felt unwell. His skin felt clammy and hot and his throat felt sore like he had been drinking vinegar. His eyes were gritty and his mouth tasted foul.

There was a slave bumbling about the room, holding a large bowl and ewer of water, that clattered as he carried it. “Hello,” Stiles called out, and the boy turned so fast he nearly dropped the bowl. It was only by sheer luck that he managed to catch them with little more than a splashing for his trouble.

Stiles had not seen this slave before, but that was not a surprise, Jennifer only had the one slave and only that one was allowed to tend to Stiles.

The longer that he was awake the more he was able to remember of the previous day and night. The city had been sacked. The Wulver had taken him hostage. He didn’t know what had happened to Jennifer.

The presence of so many alphas had triggered his heat and one of them, he had no idea which, had bitten him. His knowledge of what had happened in his heat was scant, he ached, but he didn’t know if it was the ache of being well and truly well fucked, which was a possibility, or because he had been bound and had railed against his bonds. He still had his hands tied to the pillar at the head of his pillow. They had given him enough slack that he could bend his arms and sleep with his hands beside his face, but he was bound.

“Can you help me?” he asked the boy.

It was a boy, a beta with large blue eyes and rather thick brows. The boy hefted the bowl to the table where he had intended to put it before bobbing his head and then going to where Stiles was tied up, but changed his mind and opened the door to the anteroom instead.

Jennifer came in. She was still wearing the rose colored dress that she had been wearing when they had been captured. Her hair was lopsided where she had lost some of her pins and one of her eyes was swollen shut. Her cheek was bruised and her lip split. “You're alive," she said and she actually sounded glad to hear it, which was not something that he had expected. Then she looked at him, appraising him, the way that he was bound, the dried slick on his thighs, and his new collar which he could feel but had no comprehension of. “You little whore," she hissed, “you had to raise your chiton for the first animal that came sniffing.”

Stiles wanted to curl in on himself, but he couldn't- bound and fixed to the bed the way that he was. “I didn't choose this, domina,” he used her title so that she knew that he was a good member of the Republic. He had spent his life learning to serve.

He could continue to serve.

“Do you realize what they’re going to do to you?” she asked again, “all of those lessons and you're no smarter than that slave," she threw a cup from the table at the boy where he stood at the door, staring at the floor demurely. “They’re going to use you until you die and then use you some more,” there was such hate in her voice it scared him. “And then what will come of me?” she genuinely sounded afraid as she asked him, “what use will they have for a woman whose task in the Republic is the training of its omega?”

“Domina," Stiles protested, he hadn't called her that in his head since he was a child. She was Jennifer and when possible he avoided addressing her directly.

“We have to use this,” she continued, “we have to show the Republic that we are loyal, that we can serve if the wolves don’t kill us the Republic will.” She wasn’t listening to him, wringing her hands in her skirt.

She reached over the bed and untied his hands, “this is what you are going to do,” she hissed at him, “you're going to give that animal everything he wants and more, you're going to serve him to the utmost of your ability, if we are to survive this, if either of us are to survive this," Stiles knew that the only person whose survival she was interested in was her own, “then you are going to spread those skinny little legs and open that ugly mouth of yours and you are going to do every perverted thing they want of you.” She leaned in so she was directly leaning over him. “Every," she paused after every word, “depraved” she took another breath to make sure her point was made, “unholy,” draped over him he could smell the wine on her breath, “thing.”

“Domina,” the slave said, and it was so surprising to hear one speak that both Stiles and Jennifer turned towards him. “Go,” his speech was labored and accented, and his voice cracking under the weight of puberty and fear. He pointed back at the door. “Bath.”

“If you think that I am going to visit the baths with these animals," Jennifer said turning her ire to the boy and away from Stiles. She climbed from the bed and took a menacing step towards the slave who didn't flinch.

“No,” the slave corrected her, “Omega bath.”

Stiles blinked in surprise.

He had never been to the bathhouses.

The bathhouses were open to all the alphas or betas- there were two sets- who wished to use them. They were always busy and one of the reasons that the Republic had built their capital where they had were the hot springs which fueled the baths.

Kept to himself as he was Stiles had always had to wash with hot water from a bowl on his own, and on really good days Jennifer would aid him, but the baths were too public and he was kept too private to share them. Jennifer had always used the baths herself, most of the upper echelons of the household did, but Stiles used a bowl, a cloth and some soap which everyone who didn't have access to the baths did.

With a sour expression, Jennifer went to the tray of food and lifted one of the small fruit loaves that had been laid out. She took the seat that the witch had used and started to pick apart the loaf putting it in her sore mouth in small morsels. Everything in her posture, sprawled out in the chair, was one of discontent. Especially when she realized that ewer of hot water was for her to clean herself up.

 

 

—

 

 

The baths of the Argent palace were built beside the palace proper and were a roofed building of pillars and deep rectangles where the stinking, and it did reek of rotten eggs, was allowed to pool and mix with the cold fresh water. This created a graduation of heat where good Republicans would walk into the water as hot as they could manage. The baths were more for socialization than cleanliness, but even so, there were smaller pools beside the main bath that could be filled and drained which were used for washing and rinsing before entering the main pool for soaking. There were stone couches beside the main pool where bathers would rest and drink wine, socializing with their peers.

That Argent had a bathhouse of his own was another show of his wealth.

An alpha waited for him in the bathhouse. Stiles didn’t recognize him, for he was not the one who had captured Jennifer and himself, the one with the facial scarring, but it was clear that the man was Wulver as much from stance and facial hair as his clothing.

As was proper Stiles quickly lowered his eyes although he really wanted to catalog the differences. The alpha reached out and his fingers were tipped with claws, reminding Stiles that this man was an animal but his touch was gentle as he cupped Stiles' face. He said something but Stiles didn't speak his language and had no idea what it was that was said. The hand cupped his chin and raised his face so that Stiles could look at him, as much as he was looked upon.

The alpha was gorgeous. He had a pleasing symmetry to his face and his nose was as straight as a knife blade. He had greenish-brown eyes with thick black lashes and both his hair and beard were neatly trimmed. He wore black leather but it was not battle armor, and strips of grey fur had been stitched to the cuts of the fabric to create a binding edge. The leather was fitted to a muscular body and, Stiles had to admit to himself, he smelled wonderful.

This was the alpha who had bitten him.

Stiles had, in his education, learned the vagaries of his gender, as much as the Republic knew. In its voracious hunger for land they had also acquired the knowledge of the places that they conquered, and when those scrolls and volumes were about omega Argent had allowed him access.

So Stiles knew that when he had been bitten in heat that his scent and sense of scent would change. He would become unpalatable to other alphas but his own alpha would smell amazing to him. It was something that the alphas who had written the books had been vague on, as it was something that they could not understand having never experienced it.

Collars were used to prevent an omega imprinting in this way, but the witch and her alpha had removed his gorget and this alpha had taken the opportunity to bite him in the heat that they had triggered. In his position as Argent’s omega he was valuable and so they had clearly used magic to trigger his heat so that they could steal him away.

But Stiles could not remember being bitten.

The heat had left him drunk and when he awoke from it, tired and feeling unwell, but he wanted this stranger to touch him. He was leaning into the touch and he could not help it. The alpha’s touch was wondrous and when he looked at him again, through heavy lids because the whole thing felt languorous, the alpha’s eyes were flared red.

He was aware, in an academic sense, that some Wulver and Ulfbär, although the academics had not known why or the reasons for the variations, had the ability to flare their eyes as if from an inner light. Some of them had eyes that flared yellow, some blue, but very rarely they had red eyes.

This alpha had red eyes.

One scholar had theorized that blue eyes were a sign that they were members of certain tribes, or had leadership abilities, but all Wulver with red eyes were tribal leaders.

He was talking but Stiles had no idea what he was saying. It was still pleasant to hear him talk. His voice was not a deep growl either but was soft and Stiles wanted to listen even if he had no hope of understanding. There was a stiff language barrier between them. Nevertheless, the alpha was stroking Stiles' cheek with the pad of his thumb.

Desire was pooling in a soft lazy way in his belly, like a syrup in the bowl of his pelvis, and he could feel himself getting wet just from the alpha stroking his cheek.

The alpha raised his other hand, almost nervous, and he was talking and Stiles remembered what Jennifer had told him, about the knot and them being animals and how any kindness he offered was to get him to spread his legs, but the palm running over the skin of his shoulder didn't feel proprietary, but instead was gentle and curious.

The alpha asked him something and frowned when he realized that Stiles had no idea what it was that he was saying, running the pad of his thumb over his mouth and not just his cheek, parting his lips. An instant burst of taste exploded in Stiles’ mouth, salt and soap and alpha. Wanting more he sucked the tip of the thumb, claw and all, into his mouth and curled his tongue around it.

The alpha said something and pulled his hands away even as he stepped into Stiles’ space, making Stiles step back against the wall which was cold against his skin, touching the collar he wore for a moment before moving to the brooches that held shut his chiton, first the left and then the right was undone allowing the fabric to fall down around his waist. Then he fumbled with the belt until Stiles had to help him.

Desire had made the alpha fumble-fingered, and Jennifer’s words were in his ears. If they were to get out of this alive he had to give him everything he wanted.

It was clear that the alpha did not want to hurt him, this time.

He was trying to be so careful with his claws, but he was fascinated not by Stiles’ nudity but by his throat in its collar, as he guided Stiles down into the pool of his clothing on the floor.

Stiles could feel the heat and itch burning through his skin again, his mouth was flooded by saliva and he moved his hands to his alpha, scrabbling about looking for the fastening to his clothes. There were too many clothes and Stiles said so, aware that his alpha could not understand him at all.

With a jerk, the strap came free of the buckle and the jacket was open, and he had hands on flesh, and rather than loosen the fever under his skin it heightened it.

The heat that had subsided unfulfilled flared up under his skin so that it burned like fire under his skin, and the only thing that eased it was his alpha - the one that they had denied him, and now he would not be denied.

He pulled the alpha in to him, they were almost of a height, and the alpha’s throat was in his teeth and there was salt and sweat and skin and then as he pressed down harder, teeth where the alpha had bitten him, where there was a gland under his skin that changed his body for his alpha, he bit down and let his mouth fill with coppery blood.

The alpha roared in triumph. His hands were on Stiles’ ass and grabbing, pulling him in tighter, so that they were skin to skin where the alpha’s jacket was open, and there were tattoos there, a set of three spirals around an open triangle, and a wolf made of interwoven bands that chased the moon over his shoulder, lined in blue and black and Stiles wanted his mouth on it immediately.

He was aware of the cold stone under his clothes against his back where the alpha had crowded him, and then the hands on his ass lifted him up to rest on his shoulders and pulling his crotch up against his leather pants. Stiles let out a loud peal of laughter at how ridiculous and wondrous it was. He had his hands around the alpha’s neck whilst the alpha supported him with a single hand and the floor and tried to undo the fall of his pants and suck marks on Stiles’ jaw all at the same time.

Stiles felt drunk on him.

He had never been drunk, Jennifer had made sure if he had gotten wine, which was rarely, it was heavily watered, but he imagined this was what being drunk felt like.

Then the pants were open and half-hitched down around his thighs and there was glorious skin and rough hair and heat and hardness and then his cock was rubbing against the alpha's and the drunkenness was an understatement replaced by madness. His back was getting scraped raw against the marble floor but all he cared about was the slow drag of skin on skin, and then the fingers clutching at his buttock moved. A fingertip skated over his ass where he was slick and he felt swollen and loose and he wanted to throw his head back but the floor was there holding it in place and he was losing his mind.

Then the fingertip, thankfully without its claws, breached him and he made a noise he had not expected of himself. Sex had always been presented as a service to him, something that he would perform for others. He had never expected to enjoy it.

He had learned, with use of the toys in his box, how to fellate someone using a dildo, and how to assume the proper position for knotting, if it was wanted. He knew which toys would be necessary to prevent his orgasm because that was not a required part of his service. He was a toy like the ones in the box and he knew that. He would have the rest of his life after he served to enjoy himself, but the feeling of the finger dipping in and out of his ass felt wondrous.

And the noises he was making were astonishing.

He had not realized that he would sound like a puppy but he was making high pitched yip noises.

And the alpha was growling, there was a deep reverberation rumbling through his chest and Stiles liked that he was the one who was making the alpha feel it, who was making his eyes flare and him growl like a beast.

At his ass, he could feel something larger than fingers trying to seek entrance, and he wanted it, but he wasn't in the right position. How would the alpha gain access if Stiles wasn’t on his hands and knees with his hips lifted in lordosis? Then with a grunt, the alpha pushed his hips up and the head was inside.  
With every thrust he knocked the air from Stiles’ lungs, as he threw his fuck up into him, scraping the skin across Stiles’ shoulders against the marble.

Their faces were so close they were sharing breath and Stiles made sure to cross the breach, trying to lick into his mouth because his face was pushed back with each thrust and he couldn't think other than want, there, there, there, there.

He could feel float at the edges of his consciousness. When an omega was knotted they entered “float,” where they entered a sort of drowsiness of heavy muscles and sluggish thoughts to prevent them struggling away from the knot and damaging either themselves or their alpha.

Stiles was yet to be knotted but it felt like a warm lassitude that he was sinking into, and his alpha was holding him up and grunting into his mouth. Stiles let his head fall back with a loud thump, urging the alpha on with climax almost, almost, almost.

He came with a wail that caused his entire body to lock up and the cock within him started to swell, the alpha’s knot locking them together. For long moments and Stiles rested in float with his shoulders against the floor, struggling to catch his breath, before the alpha moved, turning them so he was sat on one of the stone benches, a pillar to his back, and Stiles draped over him with his thighs around his waist and his head resting on his shoulder, breathing him in and enjoying his first float.

Jennifer hadn't bothered to teach him about float, for he was trained to be a concubine to Lord Argent, his own pleasure was secondary. He was to accept everything given to him but it was to be acknowledged that it was a benefit of his service, something that happened on its own because of what he was doing. If he wanted to enjoy what he was doing he would have to do it himself, and if Argent wanted him to stop he would have had to.

The alpha didn't seem to care. He took pleasure from Stiles’ pleasure and reacted so pleased when Stiles made a noise because of what he had done.

As they sat there his alpha fed him slices of fruit and preserved meat, rolling them up and bringing them to Stiles’ mouth for him to eat. There was even mouthfuls of sweet red wine and morsels of sharp white cheese. As he did so he talked but Stiles had no idea what it was that he was saying. It was just liquid vowels interspersed with clicking consonants, which harder than the sing-song speech of Republican.

Stiles wanted to know what the alpha was saying. He sounded fond, occasionally running the rough palm of his hand down Stiles’ side and across his thigh, sometimes hitching him up a small way.

When they disengaged, which was an unpleasant experience that left Stiles feeling empty and slimy, as slick and semen made it’s way out of him in gobbets that slapped against the tile floor, his alpha sat him down by one of the smaller tubs and used a cloth dipped in the hot water to wash him down, then urged him into the water. Despite being as exhausted as Stiles himself must be he took pleasure in washing him down, his rough hands running over Stiles’ skin. He took especial pleasure in scrubbing between his toes because it made Stiles laugh.

Stiles knew he was drunk on it, on the presence of his alpha, the one his body was altering to attract, and the attention he was paying. But in his head, he could hear Jennifer reminding him that no matter what it was only his body reacting in an animal fashion, and that the animal would abate, but his alpha was an actual animal and he would hurt him and destroy him and he would do so in his animal passions.

 

 

—

 

 

When Derek went into the room that Peter had set up as a center for discussion, where any of the other tribe’s Alphas could come for information and knowledge he found Lydia perched on a table, with her legs crossed under her, and her eyes were bird black. She did this sometimes, allowing the raven to take her sight and her to see through its eyes. It allowed her to survey fields and battle lines, but it exhausted her. She tried not to do it, but in enemy territory, holding a city that they had sacked and had no intention of keeping the more information that they had the better.

Peter was fussing, as he often did when Lydia used her magic, moving things about on the map that Argent had set into a marble table. There were little lead figurines that could be moved to show where troops were believed to be in the field. Peter kept picking them up, examining them in a way that did not involve actually seeing them for all that he held them in front of his face, and putting them back down.

“So, did you and the omega talk?” Peter asked, continuing to fuss with the figurines and not looking at his Alpha, “because you stink of soap and sulfur so I’m suspecting there wasn't much talking.”

“We don't speak the same language,” Derek said, taking the seat at the head of the table, “it makes things complicated.”

“Lydia," he called to her and then realized that she could not hear him in a single moment, it was a moment more of a disappointment than confusion. He spent so much of his life with Lydia as conspirator and almost finishing his thoughts that when she was unable to he noticed the lack and it stymied him, he cursed under his breath, “one of the captured slaves,” the word tasted like poison in his mouth, the very concept of slavery offended him, “he's from the west, from Lile, he speaks some Republican and some Wulver. We can have him work with your new omega.”

Derek nodded, “find him some new clothes,” he said, “something more appropriate to his new station. Make sure he understands the change.”

Peter nodded, “what are we going to do about the people who didn't flee, the ones we said that we wouldn't kill?”

“Is there food in their storehouses?” Derek asked, normally the first thing he would have done was learn what resources he had, what he could use to strengthen the pack.

“More than enough and then some,” Peter said, “they hoarded it. So many of their people were starving and they have enough food, I’ve had Ennis giving out the perishables to them.”

“Do it with the valuables too, most of them are going to leave, when the Republic retakes the city they’ll be treated as collaborators, make sure that they understand that. If they can carry it they can have it.” Peter nodded, “just because we can't use it doesn't mean someone can’t. We want Argent to understand he took everything from us, we can take everything from him. He took what we valued, we’ll take what he does.” There was iron in his voice as he spoke.

"Including his omega," one of the other Alphas asked. It was Deucalion, who managed one of the largest packs, and had the fiercest fighters. His people had taken the job of sacking the walls and had enjoyed it. When Argent heard of the brutality it was Deucalion's wolves that had done it. The same shock troops were the ones who prevented the Republic foot soldiers from moving into the city's slums to slaughter the people cowering there. It had been Republic officers who had started the fires, although Derek was sure that the Wulver and Ulfbär would take the blame.

Derek knew the truth of it, and he knew the people under his command knew the consequences of such wanton destruction. It was something his sister had said when they were children; that when countries fought it was the peasants that suffered. The Lords would abandon their thrones. The armies would take what they needed. It was the people left behind who suffered.

Cora had died when the Republic had burned down the city of the Tribes of the Moon, as the Wulver called themselves, but he remembered what she had said, and although the Tribes could not support the peasants of Beacon Hills he knew she would have been horrified at the hovels that they lived in. Beacon Hills had been a city of two distinct poles, the extreme wealth of the Republic living a stone's throw from the poorest of its slums. There were Republic vomitoriums, buildings designed for those who had gorged themselves could throw up to make room for more food in their feasts, stood next to empty storerooms and almshouses.

The Tribes honored all of its members, they were pack, and if they were unable to hunt they would do something else, there were always tasks even if it was only looking after the elders who could not act on their own. The pack looked after its own, and worse than simply disregarding its old and infirm the Republic cast aside those who could work because they were born without wealth. There were slaves who were treated better than those in the slums, and the idea that they held other people as chattel made the growl rise in his throat.

The Republic called them the monsters.

“I didn't claim the omega to spite Argent,” Derek told Deucalion. It was an honest answer, he had not even known that he had had an Omega; The Republic was known for murdering them. That Argent kept on did not really surprise him, although it should have.

“It is a pleasant bonus, however," Deucalion said, sitting at one of the other chairs, and crossing his legs. In his human skin Deucalion was blind, but as a wolf, he could see as well as any. He let people underestimate him because it served him to do so. "I am told the boy is comely.”

“I find him fair," Derek said.

“The first hours of bonding are so pleasant, especially the conversation." Derek made a grunt telling that he had heard him but didn't deign to answer. As First Alpha Derek could command the Tribes but that did not make him their absolute leader, he was not Selune or her priesthood to tell the Wulver how to think. He did not mind if Deucalion mocked him with such harmless jibes. Time would alter the circumstances, languages could be learned after all.

Lydia opened her eyes and leaned to the left, then swayed to the right and Peter crossed the floor as quickly as he could to catch her, so that she fell into his chest. “Argent’s troops are in Tigris,” she said, she had seen it as the Raven, all those places where he had left his armies. “He sacrificed the city,” she said and the idea was horrifying to her. “He took everything he considered valuable from the city and left it to burn.”

 

 

—

 

 

Although the Alpha had been attentive to Stiles’ needs it had not occurred to him to replace the clothes that Stiles had been wearing so he had to pull his stained and damp chiton back on to go back to the room they had given him. He was led by an older slave who kept his eyes down but the cuff on his wrist that marked him as the property of the Argent’s had been removed and the skin was red and raw, covered in some kind of balm, but the sight of it made Stiles touch his new collar. Unlike the one he had worn most of his life, it did not seem to chafe or rub blisters. It was also looser and because of that, it felt strange on his neck.

His new room was empty, the bed had been changed and Jennifer sent somewhere else. The young slave who had been there before, the one with the thick brows, was carrying a heavy chest into the room and like the older slave, he had had his cuff removed.

Dropping the casket with a grunt the boy offered Stiles a smile and said “Liam."

Stiles had no idea what it was that the slave was saying. He was broader across the chest than Stiles but perhaps half a head or more shorter than him, his eyes were very fine, however, being a rather brilliant shade of blue. If he had been an omega he would have been highly prized.

The slave repeated the word, this time hitting himself in the chest, "Liam” he said.

“Your name is Liam?” Stiles asked and the boy nodded. “You speak Republican?” he asked, most of the slaves who spoke the language had their tongues cut out, they could understand without feeling the need to talk about it. If they were left with their tongues it was because their masters wanted it.

“Little," the boy, Liam, told him.

“Do you speak Wulver?” Stiles asked, he wasn't sure that Liam would even understand that word but the boy nodded vigorously.

“So you speak Republican and Wulver?” Stiles wanted to make sure he was interpreting this correctly.

"Little," Liam said. “Alpha talk, alpha want Liam talk,” his accent was awful and his grammar was worse, but he was the only one who could bridge them. “Alpha give," he gestured to the chest he had carried in, “for alpha.”

Stiles went to the counter where cold food had been left out, picking up a few grapes and rolling them in his fingers as he decided what to ask the boy. “The alpha," he said, “he kept using a word, I think he was referring to me," Liam nodded, “could you translate it?”

Liam shrugged.

“Elskende” Stiles repeated the word, trying his best to manage the correct pronunciation and intonation.

Liam frowned.

“Do you know the word?” Stiles asked it was obvious Liam understood much more than he could say. “Elskende.”

Liam nodded, “find word right," he said, the alpha had said it over and over, with some reverence, and Stiles could see Liam clearly thinking it over, his gaze looked up and to the right as he searched his mind for the equivalent. The word meant so much but the equivalent in the Republic was so different. It meant something so specific, the one who married the alpha but he had been asked so he would be honest.

“Best word," Liam said, “bitch.”

Stiles could not say he was unsurprised. The alpha had filled the word with such wonder like he was surprised that he would get to say the word, but he had collared Stiles. He opened the chest to reveal a pile of shiny metal on fabric, and when he lifted a piece it revealed a headdress of gold beads and coins, almost like armor, and the clothes were the robes of an Osmanli dancer, sheer silk, and bright beads. They were the clothes that were given to the houris from the Osmanli land. The nobility of the Republic liked to dress their prettiest slaves in clothes like this and expected them to serve without even the prestige of being a concubine like Stiles was. They were dressed in silk and glass and bells and told to serve with the threat of violence if they did not.

The alpha wanted him to dress like that.

He could ignore the alpha’s kindness. Jennifer had been right. Alphas would lie and feign kindness to get what they wanted. And this alpha wanted Stiles’ body.

Stiles held up one of the outfits against himself, it was a bodice that was little more than a yoke, cut low at the front with sleeves that draped down to his shoulders. It was a cream color with gold embroidery and braid, and the braid dropped over his upper arm to his elbow where bells hung from it.

If his alpha wanted him to dress like an Osmanli houri then he would. Jennifer had told him to agree to every depraved thing in the hope they would leave this situation alive. He was learning that she was right.

 

 

—

 

 

Lydia felt exhausted after spending time as the raven, flying high over the fields to scout out the position of the Republican army. Although Peter tried to offer her food she was nauseated by the idea of eating. It was not unusual for a totem animal to stop to feed during such excursions and she could still feel the cold meat from a roadside animal corpse sliding down her gizzard through organs she didn’t have.

Her body still felt alien to her, and she didn't want to talk. The shape of her mouth felt wrong and when she saw her reflection in the cup of dandelion tea she startled enough she scalded her fingers. Peter had kissed them softly.

He understood what it was like to be in a body that didn't feel like it was your own. Sometimes when the mood struck him he would seek out the scrivener who would inscribe promises on his skin with needle and ink. She had never seen the benefit of it, although he assured her it was him simply reminding himself that his skin belonged to him and not the ravening beast that lurked in his bones.

Peter’s wolf had gone mad long before but he did not speak of his past and she did not ask.

Her raven chose him, and it felt so natural to be in his arms, to let him take care of her.

Peter let her bring her hand up to cup the scars on his face which he often did not allow her. The scars shamed him despite her assurances that they were proof of his strength. The scars were spread across his face and chest, down to the dip of his belt all along one side where a Republican farmer had thrown a lamp at him and the oil had caught flame. Even with his wolf healing he was left scarred and his vanity convinced him that they were proof that he was weak and ugly.

Sometimes his skin felt tight and hurt needing to be rubbed with sage oil, camphor and beeswax to loosen the skin that was polished smooth with pain. Lydia never minded warming it or rubbing it into his flesh, trying to distract him from the process with jokes or stories. When it was bad, when the pain lingered, even if it was just in his mind, he would go to the scrivener and return with another promise on the unscarred skin. Most Wulver marked their skin with their gods or with stories of battles won, but Peter marked his with promises to Lydia.

Her raven was more powerful in death, and Peter had made her strong.

He even loved her, as much as someone like Peter could love anyone.

Her raven loved him, and she loved him, broken and scarred and beautiful as he was.

He was coddling her, and she knew it, but she was so tired and her fingers looked so strange at the end of her arms, but she had done well. She had pleased her alpha and her mate, her elskende, the one her raven had chosen to protect it and remind her that she was bird and human, that she had something to return to.

Her thoughts were fixed on the memory of flight and the eyes of the omega whose eyes were almost Wulver gold when the light hit them. The raven could scent the death around him, and the potential within him for chaos and war.

She just didn't know what it meant.

As a bitten omega he could raise a hand against his alpha, but he could betray him. He had been raised by the Republic and as far as she knew he believed their lies. He could not physically hurt her Alpha but there were words that cut like knives. There were betrayals he could commit like giving information to the Republic and by the same token, Derek could do nothing to hurt him physically, even if it was what the boy wanted.

It was one of the reasons that the process of collaring was so important. Omega would often cover their neck so that during sex they would not be bitten, and so the gifting of collars was a promise of fidelity and love. The Wulver would give a carcanet, a collar of precious metal and stones that advertised the promise between alpha and omega. The omega chose to let no one but their alpha bite them. Over years the practice had gone on to include betas, and marriage between tribes was always completed with an elegant carcanet with the symbols of both tribes clearly displayed, although it was expected that the bride would wear something more personal after the initial ceremony.

The boy and no one was yet to discern his name, wore Derek's Carcanet, vines of gold curled around his throat, and from it hung a bead of precious amber from Rus.

He carried the capacity for great death around him, she just didn’t know if it was for the benefit of the Republic or the Tribes of the Moon.

As a seiðr, she would never wear a carcanet, and it was something that she had accepted, she was married to the tribe, to the Alpha, but Peter was her wolf, the one who kept her from going mad: what need had she for marriage when she had this instead?

He wrapped his arm around her from behind, a position he could not have achieved if she still had her wings, his hands clasping over her waist. She had sacrificed so much for power and in its place, she had found a wellspring of cunning and the support of a mad wolf who reminded her constantly that she was cherished. Let the boy destroy the tribe, as long as she had her wolf then she did not care.

 

 

—

 

 

Dressed in a fresh chiton and accompanied by the blue-eyed slave, Liam, who was attempting, poorly, to teach him the Wulver language which was made more difficult by how limited his own understanding was, Stiles took a small excursion into the private guardians of the villa.

The sun felt strange on his skin, warm and dry and utterly different to standing on his stool with his face pressed to his window.

The sky seemed immeasurably vast and the slave didn't understand why it might be momentarily terrifying, but the air was sweet, seasoned with laurel and rosemary and the remains of the smoke of the previous days. There was no one to complain that he stopped to raise the flowers to his face to breathe in its sweetness.

Academically he had understood the reasons for his confinement, as evidenced by what had happened as soon as he had encountered an alpha. He had immediately gone into heat and another alpha had taken advantage of his collarless state to bite him.

It was unseemly in the Republic for omega to be bitten. It changed their body so that their scent would only appeal to the alpha, although it could be overridden if the alpha was absent long enough, or another forced his bite over the original one, which could force the omega to self-abort any child they were carrying. He had read in the books that Jennifer had given him with casual disdain citing that they were “for his kind” that the point of collars had originally been to protect the claim that the alpha had on the omega.

But there was no beauty in that.

An omega’s scent was pleasing to all alphas so corrupting it was removing the beauty of that scent.

Stood in the cultivated gardens of the villa Stiles almost understood that reasoning. The plant beds smelled so sweet and divine that he could understand the urge to share them, and he tried to say it to Liam but the boy didn't understand the words which made Stiles exhausted more than sad.

The sun felt so good on his skin and there was a bench among the statues of goddesses depicted as beautiful young women with softly pointed omega ears and high tight breasts at least one of which was on display from undone peplos.

Stiles had never seen such art except in doodles in the margins of the poetry he had been expected to learn. Jennifer had never really cared what was in the books. She had not cared for reading.

Liam was a much more preferable guard. His demeanor was sunny and bright but his understanding of the Republican language was incredibly limited, and mostly he scared people away from Stiles with the threat of violence, but he was so small in comparison to Stiles that he struck people as a lap dog threatening people with its tiny teeth.

It did not mean the dog would not give a nasty nip but the threat was more adorable than dangerous.

He was also given to cursing a lot, he had his own army of gods but the one who flew to his lips most often was “by Toutatis.”

Stiles felt the approach of his alpha long before he saw him enter the garden. He had not thought that it was something that would happen, but it was like the winding in of a great heavy rope that was attached to his sternum. It brought him more calm than he had expected just knowing that his alpha was near.

“Alpha,” Liam said not bowing his head, the way that he might have to a Republican lord, but instead baring his throat in a measure of deference.

The alpha said to him and Liam answered him in kind, they had a short conversation before Liam turned to Stiles. “Alpha name," Liam said, “Alpha Derek," he said the syllables carefully, “dominus name.” It wasn't a question but Stiles understood his intention.

Stiles answered him carefully sounding out how to say it. “My name is Stiles," he said.

The alpha’s smile was dazzling, as bright as the sun in the summer sky and Stiles felt as warmed by it as the daylight. The alpha was being careful not to touch Stiles in case he triggered his heat again, Stiles could already feel it itching under his skin, even though the breeze was doing its to keep their scents separate. Liam was in the uncomfortable role of both chaperone and translator.

To make things worse the alpha insisted on referring to Stiles as Elskende when referring to Stiles in the third person to the slave and made a sort of hunh noise with displeasure when Stiles reacted to the word unhappily.

Stiles did not care to be called a bitch, he was an omega which was something that he could not help or prevent but omega was not an insult where bitch was.

The alpha reached across to the flowerbed and plucked a bloom from the vine, which he then offered to Stiles with a shy smile. He seemed determined to woo Stiles and had offered him many simple freedoms that the Republic hadn’t but when he reached out to touch Stiles calling him Elskende when he did so.

Jennifer had told him, at length and in gruesome detail, what it was that alphas wanted, and how that was not for him. He was a servant of the Republic, the honored servant of Lord Argent, and he was to give Lord Argent whatever it was that he wanted and to serve as he was capable.

At least then he knew what was expected of him.

Instead, he had this alpha whose language he did not share who offered him kindnesses with the same breath that called him a bitch. He touched him with claws extended and eyes red but his touch was so gentle. And Stiles’ body wanted nothing more than to yield to him because he was the alpha who had bitten him and his body wanted its alpha.

There was something in the scent of him, under the animal musk and leather, that made him think of home, and the faint memories associated with the wooden wolf that he carried in his belt. Something that was associated with the home memories that predated the Republic, shady things of warmth and ease and love and kisses on his forehead but the details were long gone.

He didn't know why his alpha, this beast alpha who had bitten him, would remind him of that. Yet he could almost completely remember it, being laid down in furs and a warm soft figure who was loved, who loved him, kissing his forehead and talking to him in a language he could not quite remember.

It endeared him to the alpha even when he didn't want to be endeared.

He even let the alpha sit next to him on the bench and just sit in the sunlight. He had half expected to be sent back inside, to worry over his skin, to be chided over making himself available to other alphas, or any of the things that Jennifer would have reminded him of. She would have chided him, bullied him inside and then taken her strop to his thighs.

Stiles didn't get the impression that the alpha would punish him for his wickedness in leaving his rooms. It didn't matter anyway, Liam had removed his collar to apply salve to the skin underneath, although the new collar felt more like jewellery than the gorget he had worn before which had felt like armour, but everyone who saw it recognised it as if it had been paraded around or was the Crown of Valia, queen of the gods.

He didn't want to admit it, not even to himself, but the alpha almost made him feel like he was the queen of the gods, and then he called him Elskende and reminded him he was property, and as valued as a stray dog.

They sat for a while in the garden.

There was no real attempt at conversation. The language barrier gaped between them like a chasm. Sometimes one or the other would lift a thing, a flower or a piece of branch and name it in their language, then the other would repeat it back and supply their own name for it.

They were interrupted by the Wulver with the scarred face. He said something and Stiles’ alpha, Derek, stood up, he turned back to Stiles and cupped his face in his hand, and then dropped a quick kiss on his lips, muttering what could have been an apology, before leaving him in the garden. He said something to Liam before he left with the other alpha.

 

 

—

 

 

“You seem to be getting along well," Peter said to Derek as they walked through the villa, “all things considered.”

“You mean that we don't speak the same language?” Derek asked him archly. Peter was Derek's uncle and one of his most trusted advisors. He had been unable to become the Alpha because of his bond with Lydia and Derek knew that Peter resented it, not because he regretted his bond with Lydia or that he didn’t care for his nephew ruling the tribe, but instead because he hadn’t had the opportunity. Peter was happy but that didn’t mean that he didn't have moments where he was full of resentment.

Peter was honest in a way that many other Wulver would never be. He only spoke the truth. He often manipulated it so that people heard what he wanted them to hear but it was the truth that he told them.

The same was not true of Lydia, whose relationship with the Raven meant that sometimes her truths were dangerous and exposed, so she lied instead.

“That too," Peter said, “I was thinking that he was a Republican slave and you are the Alpha of the Hale Tribe. The two of you are worlds apart, and that you barely share a language is moot.”

“The heart wants what it wants," Derek answered with a wry grin.

“The alpha wants the omega in heat," Peter corrected. “Your body wants him because you bit him, and you bit him because he smelled amazing. I know he smelled amazing because I was stood there too, and I might have bitten him too," Derek growled at him, “you are not an animal, Derek, even if you are close to the one beneath your skin. I taught you better than this.” That too was honest, Derek's mother had taught his sister to live in peace with her wolf, and to take over the mantle of Alpha, but Argent’s determination to destroy the Tribes had seen both of them dead.

Derek said nothing.

“Deucalion thinks you are wasting your time on him," Peter continued, “and we should sack the city, take what we can carry, including your boy, and leave the Republican peasants to the Republic.”

“You know as well as I do that they’ll slaughter them on their return as collaborators.” The Republic was not known for it's kindness, and Argent was the worst of them, so they made him their leader.

Peter gave a small shrug, “they’ll have as much time to take what they can carry as we do.”

“Taking a few days to guarantee that they are fed is hardly a waste of our time when the Republican forces remain in Tigris,” Derek said, “Argent doesn't care, at worst he’ll slaughter them, at best he’ll enslave them, pack them on galleys and work them to death. We can cover their escape, we have time, we can move much faster than they do, if it comes to it we can outrun their legions.”

“And it gives you time with your boy,” Peter replied.

“His name is Stiles,” Derek took pride in the way that the word sounded in his mouth.

“Stiles?” Peter asked, “that’s a strange name for the Republic, sounds almost like it’s from Rus or Zbravika, I can look into it.”

“You think he was taken from his homeland because he was an omega?” Peter shrugged again. “He flinched when I approached him," Derek said, “I think he expected to be punished for being in the gardens.” He could barely keep the growl from his voice, that they had mistreated Stiles, even though he would have felt the righteous indignation for anyone it was worse because Stiles was his.

“It’s likely that he spent his life in that room," Peter said, “kept sequestered so Argent could guarantee his heat and his education. We’re looking at him like a person, but the Republic looked at him like a treasure.”

“They kill omega where they find them," Derek protested, “everyone knows that.”

“Or maybe that’s what we’re told," Peter corrected, “so we don't look for them when they are taken. Or the ones that they kill are undesirable for some reason, they are too old, or bonded or some other reason. The lords of the Republic are covetous and greedy, they would not like valuable things that others have a claim on, or that has a mind of its own.”

“Are you calling him stupid?” Derek did not care for the insult to his new mate.

“No, but easily led is another matter, if you educate a child and control everything they learn, you can create something you desire completely. A perfect toy - trained and kept sequestered, utterly pliant to their will, a thing to show off to their peers, as valued as a lovely brooch but nothing more.”

Derek growled again. His beast was angered at the insult to his mate and his human side angered at the very prospect. He wanted to rend, to tear, to destroy to avenge the insult to his mate and by extension him. He shouldn't be surprised at all. The Republic kept slaves after all.

“You think he might turn on us," Derek said.

“I think he might be convinced to, right now he is in the bonding phase where his body yearns for yours, both in bed and outside it, his body wants you to reassure him that you will provide for him and future children, he cannot escape those thoughts although he can resist them. The idea of hurting you should be physically repellent, but we can all do things our bodies don't want them to do.”

“So what," Derek asked, “I should have a guard stood in our sleeping chamber just to watch him?”

“You are the Alpha," Peter said, “and there are circumstances that I would believe that Argent used an omega to murder you. Had he suggested a peace and used the boy as a promise between the Tribes and the Republic, then I would tell you to not accept, that it was a trap, but,” Peter stopped, scratching at the scars on his neck. It was a gesture he did when he was thinking. “The boy is a naif,” he said, “but he was left here with only a few guards left in the city,” it had been a rout as opposed to a siege, they had taken the city in a single night. It had been left wide open. It was possible the Republic had thought that Beacon Hills was unassailable - that with its military might that no one would dare, or as Lydia suggested - Argent just didn't care.

There was something in Tigris Argent wanted and everything else was irrelevant to him - including the boy.

Derek didn't want to hear that. He was drunk on the same bonding magic as the omega. He would feel the same reticencies that the boy, Stiles, Derek had called him did. Lydia had things that could be added to the boy’s drink if Peter was sure that he was dangerous. Derek was Peter’s nephew and he was fond of him, as much as Peter was capable of, he would be angry if the Republic killed him, and such anger would destroy the world. If he lost Lydia he would burn the world, for she was all that constrained him, but if he lost Derek she would aid him in his efforts.

If he had helped manage the sacking of the first city in the world for the murder of his sister, he would burn it all down for the last member of his family.

Peter didn't trust the boy; he couldn't afford to.

“You will not move against him unless I say to," Derek said firmly, as if he knew exactly what Peter had been thinking. “I set the law that we would have to honour any attack like that, any bonding. I am not above the law and it would be so easy if he died suspiciously, I am aware of your concerns, Peter, I know you are only worried for both me and the Tribe, I understand that you think I’m bonding drunk, and perhaps I am, but give him a chance, and I’m sure he will justify my trust in him.”

“And if he is a Republican spy?”

Derek scoffed, “then he would probably speak our language," Peter remained unmoved by the joke, “then we will execute him publicly,” Derek admitted though it physically pained him to say it. “If,” he carefully enunciated the word to make sure that Peter understood it, “if he betrays us he is to be treated like any traitor to the Tribe, as a traitor to the Pack.”

A traitor to the pack was torn apart by horses; it was not a quick or pleasant death. It had been a long time since it had happened. Pack was family and there were petty treacheries, but betraying the pack meant betraying everything that you were.

Derek didn't want Stiles to be the first in a generation.

 

 

\--

 

 

When Stiles returned to the rooms that the Wulver kept him in he found Jennifer sitting on the bed. She was still wearing the rose colored dress she had been captured in, and her hair was still in the same style where it had not fallen free in loose hanks about her face, but she had used the water that Stiles had been given to have a cursory wash.

Something had been spilled across the fabric of her skirt and Stiles didn't want to ask although Jennifer clearly expected him to. “You went outside,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest to accentuate her frown.

Jennifer was a comely woman, she had fine delicate features and a soft voice, her eyes were the deep, dark brown that was prized in the Republic but her beauty was not reflected in her manner. Well, it wasn't reflected when there was nothing that she could gain from such kindness. When it benefited her Jennifer was as sweet as a saint.

It didn't benefit her with Stiles.

“I was sat in the garden,” Stiles corrected her, “I had both a guard and my alpha keeping me company.”

“Your alpha?” she laughed, “your dog, sniffing after your ass like any other canine," her laugh was a cruel bark, “I suppose he will not care if your skin turns to leather but I shall make sure that you are lovely enough for your execution, you know that Argent will not tolerate you knowing that you have spread your legs for a beast. He will be kinder to you if he finds you helpful.”

Stiles made a point not to react. He would not give her the satisfaction. It wasn't like she was telling him anything that he didn't already know. Stiles had been prized as a virgin omega, and he had been used, not only by an alpha but by a Wulver alpha, and Argent hated those worst of all.

He poured himself a cup of wine, and took a sip of it, then decided it tasted like vinegar and put it back down with a frown.

“Derek,” Stiles corrected her.

“Pardon?” she asked, spitting out the words.

“His name, the alpha, it’s Derek,” in a few short strides Jennifer crossed the marble floor and struck Stiles hard across the face. It was unexpected because she had never struck his face, preferring the backs of his thighs, or once, the soles of his feet.

“You do not talk back to me, whore," she said, “it doesn’t matter what his name is, what matters is what you can learn and how you can further the Republic.” She still had her hand raised prepared to strike him again, but then she took a deep breath.

“We can use your magical cunt to get us out of this nightmare,” she said, “so we please this Derek of yours," she mispronounced the name and Stiles wasn’t sure that it wasn’t deliberate. “We shall protect that beauty of yours, such as it is," she whirled on her heel and looked at Liam, “you, fetch me the skin oils.”

Liam looked baffled by the instruction. “He doesn't speak Republican,” Stiles said and went to the casket that had been placed in his room, pulling out the gowns and the box of jewelry to find the ointments underneath it. He had been sure that they would be there, the entire box had a faint stink of roses.

He put the smaller box, a coffer, on the bed and opened it. There was a jar of some form of cream, kohl, beeswax mixed with oil and pigment to stain his lips and a bottle of oil, that when he opened it, was the source of the floral smell. The stopper, which was made of glass, left the smell on his fingers.

“Will this suffice?” It should, he thought to himself, because it was a finer collection than that which was in the room he had grown up in.

“What use is a slave that doesn't understand simple instructions?” Jennifer sniffed, “we should have him whipped, it will quicken his learning.”

Stiles clenched his teeth and let out a breath at Jennifer’s casual violence. She had no care for the slaves. Stiles had been kept away from them, tucked away in his room with only Jennifer and one body slave to watch over him and that man had had his tongue cut out years before. “He speaks Wulver," Stiles pointed out, “he’s how my alpha wishes to communicate with me, so if he reveals secrets to me it will be Liam that translates them for me.”

Jennifer narrowed her eyes. “Strip,” she said, “if you are to whore for the Republic you will be the finest whore that the Republic can offer, and you will perform,” there was a threat in her voice, “you shall make me proud, do not think I am scared to hurt you if you let me down, if we get out of this alive it will not be because I failed in my duty.”

Stiles undid his belt, carefully palming the wooden wolf that he kept there, and then undoing the brooches at his shoulders, letting the fabric pool around his feet.

With a dismissive glare, Jennifer indicated that Liam bring her the jug of water and the cloths that were for Stiles to wash. She didn't bother talking to him, and the water when she slopped it against his skin, soaking the chiton around his feet, was cold.

She was rough when she washed him, almost pressing hard enough to bruise, clearly disgusted that she was forced to perform such manual labor, and then, with another cloth, she began to rub the thick cream into his skin, filling the room with a sweet floral scent.

She took a long time making sure that she was content with the quality of his skin before she started digging through the chest, laughing to herself about Osmanli houri and Wulver kinks. From the clothes, she pulled out a small vest with strips of cloth that hung from each shoulder, then held it up as it jingled with the movement. “Your shoulders are too broad,” she tossed the jacket to the side and pulled out the matching pants. “The colour of the fabric will suit you well enough," she said running her thumb over the golden braid spread over her palm.

The fabric in question was sheer panels caught in a waistband and cuffs at the ankle that could be laced shut. There was a sort of loincloth that was stitched to both front and back of the pants, and the waistband was designed to dip down below his hips in a mild diagonal that framed his stomach muscles, which were soft and oiled. There was a metallic dust in the cream which made his skin shimmer prettily in the light from the braziers around the room.

He pulled on the pants and let her lace them, noticing that the crotch panel was in fact split although it did not appear to be, and sitting down to let Jennifer lace up the cuffs. The gold embroidery hung in strips from the belt and all around the cuff and golden bells hung from it so that it jingled when he moved.

Jennifer leaned in beside him as she painted his face, drawing a line of kohl around each eye, and smearing rouge on his lips. Then she smudged shadow on each eyelid and pinched his other cheek to match the redness of the mark where she had slapped him.

She rooted around in the coffer to choose the jewelry she would dress him in. “At least the gewgaws he has supplied you with are of a high quality. Do you think he carried them around in the hope that he would find you?" She held up an earring, it was a bell, at least as long as Stiles’ little finger and from the clapper, which chimed when it was moved, there was a polished sphere of aquamarine. The earring was beautiful but the stone was inappropriate. “If your eyes were blue," she said and put them back in the coffer.

The earrings that she chose were small boxes of gold from which five strings of tiny gold leaves fell into a bushel shape at the bottom. When she hung it from his ear it fell clear to his shoulder and was heavy.

She wove the crown into his hair, having to put actual braids in to anchor the pins, but it was a curve of gold coins, fixed together on a net, and then thinner leaves of gold that went over his forehead with a mesh of chains and beads over his eyes, other chains with pendant drops went over his cheeks, and under his nose, but curled around the back of his head. Other pendants hung at random from the mesh and it did not hinder his sight, but he got the impression if he was expected to wear it for any length of time he would have a terrible headache from the weight.

None of the jewelry she draped him in was light.

The necklace was a multitude of beaded chains, gathered in three swags that draped along his collarbone and over his shoulders, some of the beads were large but the whole thing made a chingling sound when he moved.

He got the opportunity to see himself reflected in the bowl of water that Liam had refilled, and he looked utterly unlike himself. It was not that he looked like an Osmanli pleasure boy, but he looked beautiful. Jennifer had, as was her wont, done her job well. She might have utterly resented doing her duty for a Wulver but she still did it to the best of her ability.

She had turned him from an awkward boy of long skinny limbs into a true beauty.

His alpha would be proud of him. He would desire him. It made him want to perform. Walking across the room, to a choir of chains jingling and rattling he opened the box that contained the tools of his trade. He lifted one of the cock rings, it was made of tortoiseshell with a small latch and put it on himself with his back to Jennifer. She might know he was wearing one but she did not need to see it.

It didn't matter, he had draped the pink gown over her arm, “I’m taking this," she said, “what I’m wearing is disgusting,” her entire tone was one of imperiousness. She always spoke like she was an empress and that the world should bow to her will with Stiles. She attempted to seduce those who she felt would give her advantage. She had very little scruples about what benefited her. If it worked out in her favor she would do anything.

In the situation that they were in Stiles supposed, she was onto something.

When one of the guards came in to lead Jennifer out Stiles grabbed Liam on his way out. "I need you to teach me a word," he said, “I want to know the word no,”

Liam gave him the word, but he looked surprised. Then he gave another word, and nodded vociferously, “That’s yes?” he asked. Liam repeated the word and nodded again. Confirming the words yes and no in Stiles new Wulver vocabulary.

 

 

—

 

  
One of the slaves came in and made sure the braziers were lit, and the lamps, so the room was bright despite the night outside. The air was fragrant with summer foliage in the gardens so the breeze that came in through the open windows was cool and sweet.

The night was hot, especially with the braziers lit, so Stiles sat on the edge of the bed sweating, despite how lightly he was dressed. He was, however, wearing a few pounds of jewelry. He supposed that counted as heavy clothing.

It was a while before the alpha, Derek, joined him. Derek looked tired as if he was carrying the weight of the Republic on his shoulders. There were dark circles under his eyes and a dour set to his mouth that had not been there in the garden.

When he saw Stiles he smiled and it was soft and fond and a little secret. He said something, which was clearly a compliment and Stiles preened under the praise. He wished that he knew what it was that was said but the gesture warmed his heart.

Jennifer was so adamant that he was perfect that he could find comfort in his training. Jennifer had presented him beautifully, so he would be perfect not just for her, but for himself, and his alpha.

He stood up, his bare feet catching the alpha's attention, he noted the ring on his toe, the way the metal caught the light, as unobtrusive but necessary to the whole look as the rings on his thumbs but Derek could not know that he also had a ring on his cock.

When Derek went to move Stiles smiled and pressed a fingertip to Derek's lips and said the word that Liam had given him, “Nei," he said, then with his hands and his smile made sure that Derek knew he was to watch, but not to touch. This performance was for him, and he would be part of it, simply by sitting where he was.

Stiles took a few steps back and then, using the jingle jangle of the chains he wore, and the beads clinking against each other, he started to dance.

In normal life, Stiles was a mess of coltish limbs that were at least an inch longer than he thought that they were. He tripped over his own feet, walked into doorways, fell over low furniture and banged his head regularly, but Jennifer had drilled him in the motions, over and over, practice giving him a grace that he normally lacked.

His hips swung keeping time as he bent and raised his legs, his arms, even bared his throat as Derek growled, clearly moved by the display. Stiles stamped his feet as his arms and the bangles on them twisted designs in front of his face. He was using his body to make his own music, his feet giving him a beat whilst the chains made a soft discordant music, and his breath worked a counterpoint.

Derek was growling, his eyes flared red and his fangs bared. He was opening and closing clawed fists on his knees. Stiles could see the bulge in his leather pants and how he had loosened the collar of his jacket. Stiles wanted to get his mouth on the rise of his Adam's apple, but the dance wasn't done.

His hands skimmed over the soft flesh of his belly, making a diamond with the thumbs and forefingers of each hand over his navel as his hips swung, making figure eights before, with both feet on the ground, he bent his knees, his back straight and raised each arm at a right angle, before he dropped down with his hands flat on the floor, and his face a breath’s distance from Derek's bulging crotch. “Ja?” he asked him. He had taken the two words that Liam had taught him, yes and no, and he was making them work for them.

When Derek’s hands went to move to grip Stiles’ head, looking as if they were about to tug him up into a kiss, Stiles batted away his hands and said “nei,”

Derek looked confused until Stiles laid a kiss on the bulge, and then straightened up, a second kiss was dropped on Derek’s lips, a promise as much as an instruction, and moved to the bench, where his box had been placed, left open.

He sat down, his eyes meeting Derek’s brazenly and from the box, he pulled several items, a dildo, a wooden mesh shaped like the basket of a sword and a sphere with a strange cone on it. He put the basket on the cone, and then used it to screw the base onto the dildo, then from the box he pulled the bottle of oil that had been there, which was just cheap quality olive oil - he had tasted it whilst waiting for Derek - and started to slather it on the dildo.

He knew the dildo well; it had been the one that trained him. He had learned to fellate and to take it anally. He knew every lump and bump and whorl in the wood.

With his legs spread he reached down with both hands to find the slit in the crotch of the pants, and using his thumbs pulled it open to reveal his sex, both his ringed cock and his ass, which he knew was shiny with slick.

Shaking splatters of oil onto his fingers Stiles began to touch himself, every motion punctuated by the jingling of the chains. One hand cupped his ringed cock, tugging it lightly with a thumb over the head, and the other introduced two fingers, pressed together and slick with oil, into his ass. With his alpha watching.

He wanted to ask Derek if he liked what he saw, but he couldn't- not with the language barrier between them, yet Derek's eyes were still flared red.

He was growling with the desire but Stiles had told him to sit, and he sat.

It was clearly torture but he sat.

When three fingers were sliding in and out of his ass comfortably, when Stiles couldn't catch his breath and had long since lost his mind, he started to use the dildo, pushing it in one tiny measure at a time, then rocking it back out and pushing it in, just a little deeper. He was careful to avoid his prostate because he didn't want this to be over quickly, even wearing the ring, because Derek was watching and Derek wanted and Stiles wanted Derek to want, even with the polished wood sliding in and out and his breath was ragged and Derek was growling and his other hand, the one that had been tugging on his cock, found the nipples on his chest and tugged.

Derek ripped open the laces of the fall of his pants, snapping the leather thongs completely with a snap and tugged out his cock, which was angry and red and hard and Stiles wanted it in his mouth. He could feel the juices pooling in his mouth and slopping down unto the cream fabric of his pants. He tugged the dildo out with a slurping noise and let it fall to the floor beside him with a clatter.

He crawled across the floor, hips raised in the perfect pose of an omega and his hole was open and wet and pulsing and put his hands on the crease of Derek's hips as he came face to face with his alpha’s erection.

It was beautiful.

Stiles breathed it in, the musk of it, and heat and warm leather and sweat and alpha, and with one arm rested against Derek's thigh he took his cock in one hand and pulled it down to his mouth, the lips of which felt swollen.

The tip of his tongue flickered out to taste it.

Previously when they had fucked it had been almost perfunctory, although both were driven mad by desire and heat. Stiles had not been given the opportunity to explore his alpha and he had not known the words to ask for it, but now he could make tiny kitten licks against the head, forced out of its foreskin and wet with desire, salty sour and thick as egg white on his palate.

Then there was the taste of the skin, warm and musky with leather and Stiles was taking deep breaths through his nose - not because he could not breathe but because he wanted to fill his lungs with the stink of him.

Derek groaned and threw back his head.

His claws were digging into the fabric he was sat on, ripping through it, and Stiles had done that.

Stiles had brought out the animal in the Wulver - because Derek wanted him that fiercely that only the animal under his skin understood it and knew how to react.

Stiles groaned along with him, his mouth vibrating with the noise of it, causing Derek's claws to tighten even further. He dropped down into a squat, instead of on his knees, so he had more balance and then reminding himself he knew this. He had been trained in this. He gave his alpha pleasure with his mouth.

He sucked the head into his mouth with wet smacks, making sure to use lots of spit so it was sloppy and wet and lubricated as he moved, sucking only when he pulled back but pushing forward so he could feel the head of Derek's cock against the back of his throat, and then, taking a sucking breath through his nose, further.

Stiles had trained, with Jennifer giving instruction, on the wooden dildo he had left on the floor behind him, on all the ways to bring his alpha pleasure with his mouth. He used his tongue as a pillow, curling up the edges and just covering his lower teeth with the tip, letting the muscles of his cheeks bring him pleasure.

He was half mad now with his own desire, held back by the ring, without which he would have splattered his orgasm over the floor long since.

He was enjoying what he was doing, he could feel the fire pooling low in his belly like he was drinking it directly from the source.

He pulled back and licked his lips, waggling his jaw, and his hand on the hairy sac of his alpha’s balls, using his fingers to roll them around, and the feel of them aroused him too. “Ja?” he asked, his mouth still smacking, “Ja?" he needed Derek to say yes, he wouldn't do anything without permission. His desire needed Derek to say yes.

“Ja,” Derek said, and released by the word he reached out and grabbed Stiles by the arms pulling him in, and into a demanding kiss, forcing his tongue inside Stiles’ mouth, even as Stiles tried to part the fabric of his pants to give access to his hole, remove the ring, and climb on top of Derek all at the same time which completely failed.

Derek cupped his hands around Stiles’ ass, lifting him up so he could wrap his legs around Derek’s waist, one leg at a time, so he didn't fall, but didn't stop kissing him, and his thick fingers pulling open the fabric and dipping into the wetness he found there. Between kisses, he murmured things into Stiles’ mouth that Stiles didn't understand, including the word, Elskende.

When Stiles heard it he muttered nei back, Derek blinked in surprise before Stiles dove back in for another kiss, it didn't matter Stiles supposed, that Derek didn't understand that he didn't like the word.

With a grunt Derek’s cock breached him, sliding inside where he was hot and empty like he had been made just to sheathe his cock. It was almost enough to drive him clear out of his mind, pushing up against the knot of pleasure that he had avoided before. Stiles fumbled with the cock ring before he managed to unlatch it and tugged it off. It was too fragile to simply throw on the floor, the tortoiseshell would shatter, and it surprised Stiles that he was aware of that, although only a very small part of him was, and dropped it on the fabric behind him.

Without restraint he could tug on his cock, full and heavy and ready, but he didn't want to come yet. He wanted to savour the delicious drag of Derek’s cock in and out of him; of his hands kneading his ass, pulling it wide and then releasing it so that it tugged on his hole, and the way that Derek kissed him like he wanted to climb into his mouth and emerge from the back of his head and it felt so damn good that Stiles was sure that it should be a form of sacrilege.

And with every thrust, with every move, all of the jewelry he was wearing jingled and jangled, chiming in a discordant shimmer amongst the grunts and slaps of skin meeting skin.

He came with a noise that surprised him, for it was not the yip noise that Derek had punched from him before, and Derek didn't stop, he wasn't ready to stop yet, rocking his hips up into Stiles with hard slaps, until his knot began to swell and instead he started to grind into him, letting Stiles sink into float before he stopped kissing, his fingertips running over the curve of Stiles’ face as Stiles lolled against him, so deep in float he felt like his limbs had been replaced with rags.

He was a Republic trained omega, trained to please his alpha, and he was sure that he had pleased him very well indeed when Derek let himself fall back onto the bed, with his feet still flat on the ground, and just nuzzled the tip of his nose against Stiles, murmuring nonsense words into his hair and his crown of gold jingling as they breathed.

 

 

\--

 

 

When Stiles woke his alpha remained with him, lying beside him on the pillow, and running his hand up his arms. He had a smile so wide that it reminded Stiles of the glorious midday sun, bright and white and full of teeth. Sleep had made him scruffy. He wore his beard neatly clipped to his face and his dark hair, worn as short as a foot soldier’s, was tousled, from Stiles' fingers as much as sleep.

There were pillow creases on his face when he moved, and he was sweeping his hand, rough with calluses from his weapons, down Stiles’ arm to his hip, causing the chains Stiles was wearing to rattle a little.

Stiles supposed that was the noise that had awoken him.

He felt safe, warm and protected in a way that was entirely new to him. He lay on his side, still wearing the finery of the previous evening and his cock hanging softly out of the sheer pants. It surprised him that he even fell asleep wearing the crown, but at some point in the night, it had been removed. He knew that he hadn’t done it so it must have been his alpha, Derek.

He had done it so gently that he had not even woken Stiles, pulling the pins from the small braids in his hair and dropping them off the side of the bed and then removing the crown, which was more flexible than it looked, and dropping it at the top of the bed, out of the way of where they slept.

He had at some point, undressed, and done so without waking Stiles, who feeling safe and warm and comfortable had slept like a dead thing, certainly deeper than any other sleep he could remember.

It was a surprise to Stiles to find that he trusted his alpha completely. He was a handsome man, his alpha, with dark hair that covered his arms and legs, and in the divot of his navel and around the sleeping weight of his cock.

There was strength there, a promise of violence in the corded muscles of his thighs and arms, a lifetime of activity in the plains of his back and shoulders, but his eyes were twinkling and soft and sometimes green and sometimes brown and Stiles found himself wanting to catalog and record every striation found there.

Charmingly his front teeth were almost the same length as the rest which gave him the appearance of a bunny, which was entirely contradictory to him being Wulver.

He was so earnest and proud that Stiles wanted to squirm. He had never been subject to any kind of scrutiny. He had spent his life in a single room, but this alpha was looking at him like he was a fine dinner and he wanted to lick the plate. There was hunger there, certainly, but also pride and wonder.

It made Stiles a little uncomfortable. He was so unused to it.

The Wulver witch, Stiles had not learned her name, came in after a brief and peremptory knock on the pillar. She had eschewed her cloak of raven feathers and had in its place pulled on a gown of linen and leather the likes of which he had not seen before, but was matched with a heavy necklace which he guessed to be from Tigris.

She said something to Derek in their strange, barking language, full of hard consonants and long vowels, and Derek rolled his eyes which made Stiles chuff a laugh, which caused Derek to dart forward and kiss him softly, before he got out of the bed, leaving the taste of him on Stiles’ lips.

He wished that he knew that his performance had been seen favorably by his alpha, that he had enjoyed the dance as well as him pleasuring him with his mouth and his body.

He got up, his sheer pants loose around his hips now with his arms stretched up above his head not caring if the witch watched him. She didn't seem impressed, just sitting down on one of the benches that lined the room, and poured herself a cup of wine, which she sniffed in an interested fashion before she took any of it.

Jennifer bustled in with a jug of steaming water and a smile, she was wearing the pink dress that she had taken from the casket, which the witch noticed because she sized her up, and her lips and eyes narrowed in notice, but she didn’t react when Jennifer spoke. Her tone was sweet and cloying but her words were not. “And how is my little dog fucker today?”

Stiles didn’t bristle at her insult. Instead, he undid the metal clasp on the pants but sat down on the bed to unlace the cuffs, and in doing so tugged off the toe rings. Most of his jewelry was at the far edges of the bed to be collected later.

The Wulver didn't seem to care for gold, except as amusing decorations. They certainly did not treat it as the Republic did, like it was the most valuable thing in the world.

He let her wash him, and let her insults and petty cruelties wash over him. She insulted every part of him, of his bonding, and the beautiful collar that he had been given.

She mocked him in a honey-sweet voice about being bonded to a dog, how only omega were weak enough to be bonded, and so they were worthless and deserved to be bonded to animals.

Her tone never changed from light and pleasant as she talked about Stiles being ripped open when his dog finally knotted him.

She was relying on the fact that although the witch was in the room, breaking her fast, she did not understand the words, and was judging what was happening entirely by tone. Stiles didn’t react, he wasn't that unused to it.

Jennifer had been thorough in his training, but she had never been kind.

She washed him with perfunctory swipes of a rag that were almost hard enough to be painful, the water steaming hot, enough that her hands were red and full of shaved curls of soap that had melted into a thick almost oily foam, that smelled of orange and cloves, a scent he knew from experience would linger on his skin.

“Your dog has brought you some clothes," she said, “you can stand there with your little cocklet hanging out for the witch’s amusing whilst I bring it, they use me like a slave, but they are kind to the slaves, so I suppose it doesn't matter,” she flipped her dark hair over her shoulder in a practised gesture to show how little she cared. That she used the practiced gesture told him she did care. Her pride did not care to be mistaken for a slave.

She was a Domina.

It had been a mark of honor to train Argent’s omega and it was a black mark of shame to let him be corrupted and ruined by a Wulver. The Republic considered the Wulver to be less than animals. So it would be considered her failure and her betrayal that Stiles was ruined.

Stiles didn't feel ruined.

He felt well fucked. He ached in all manner of places that he had not known could ache. He had twinges in his sides and burning in his thighs, but he did not regret it in the least. He wondered idly if his pants were ruined by slick and his alpha's cum, it would not surprise him and he wasn’t sure that he liked that. It was a wonder the bed was not ruined for his waist and ass were covered in raised welts from claws. Proof of him being an animal fucker, Jennifer had said in her sugary sweet voice. The witch had noted them with a practiced disdain. They did not surprise her.

Perhaps her wolf had left similar welts on her skin.

The clothes that the Wulver had given Jennifer for him were completely different from the Osmanli clothes they had given him previously. They were made of goat leather, finely cured and soft as warm butter. There were pants, laced up the outside with leather thongs, but when he tugged them on he learned that the thongs were entirely aesthetic, the pants were stitched well and tightly.

There was a linen shirt, embroidered with red thread in little blossoms in a yoke, and tucked into his pants. There were boots, lined in rabbit fur, and with a soft bed and hardened leather soles. There was even a jacket, trimmed in fur like Derek's had been, but there was white stitching trailing white snowdrops down the front placket. There was even a fur hood. The jacket had been dyed a rich dark red.

The Republic favored chiton and stola, using huge amounts of fabric but eschewing stitching or pattern cutting. It was a show of wealth and power that they did so.

The Wulver clothes, in contrast, were functional, close fitting and, he realized, running his fingers over the fine fur, wondering idly if it was mink or sable or some other black beast that he had never even read of, warm.

They were planning on taking him with them, Stiles realized.

The Wulver might have considered him their bitch, but they were treating him with consideration and care.

“I have a knife for you, little one,” Jennifer continued in that saccharine sweet voice, “and tonight, when he comes to you, when he’s knotted up in your tight cunt, here’s what you do, you take the knife from the pillow and you stick it in his neck. With their Alpha dead the Wulver will be disorientated, I’m told they can't function until a new one is chosen, they’ll be little more than dazed soldiers and the Republic men can come in.”

“And if I don't want to," Stiles asked, still stroking the fur on the hood of his coat, draped as it was across his lap.

The Republic had always taught him that the wearing of dead animals was abhorrent. It was a thing peasants did because they couldn't afford fabric, but the leather was as supple as linen and the fur was softer even than the finest velvet.

“You will do this,” she said, “or I’ll slit your throat and then his. Do you realize what the Republic will do to you? Death will be too kind. This is our only hope, you fool, the Republic’s armies are already moving to retake the city. They will harry the Wulver to the end of the world. Is that what you want? We must seize the opportunity.” She moved across so that she was in his face, pretending to adjust the shirt he was wearing so she could get as close as she could without alert the witch who was sat watch over him. “Either you do this or I kill the both of you, do I make myself clear?”

“As a crystal," he answered.

 

 

—

 

  
Liam had been born in the wild Massif of Lile. He was a shepherd’s son, and his mother had remarried and Liam enjoyed a happy life until the Republic swept in with their armies and swept up all the young and healthy people and killed the rest, burning down their homes so no one else would settle there.

Like all of the people he had grown up around Liam had been lined up and measured. The ones with some sort of feature that the Republic wanted went into one group, those who could serve in the army were recruited at the end of a cudgel, the rest went to the slave galleys and fields.

Liam had fought his new fate all the way to Beacon Hills, which stoked a rage inside him, and within a month of his new enslavement in the Argent palace, where he had picked up only a few words of Republican and most of those were rude, when the Wulver swept in and freed them all.

Because Liam was caught in the terrible dilemma of having enough Wulver to trade sheep and enough Republican that he could almost sort of muddle through a basic conversation he was set as the guard, or companion, or translator, he wasn’t sure of the actual position, of the Wulver Alpha’s new Elskende.

The Elskende was Republican raised and although he was kind to Liam and made effort to ask about the words that Liam knew in Wulver.

He shared his meals with Liam, uncaring that they were giving him better meals because he was the Alpha’s Elskende. If he had fine meat or fruit he split the plate evenly and made it clear that Liam was to eat too.

They had barely any conversation and most of what passed between them was pointing and Liam's amused declaration of “I fell in a hole," when he accidentally stepped into a hole that had been excavated for a decorative bush before the sack. He had felt enervated by the Elskende’s laughter.

It was the Elskende’s kindness that made the decision for him. It was not something that the Elskende did to curry favor with Liam. It was just him being himself.

He found one of the Wulver commanders to explain what he had seen. The Elskende was being pushed about by the domina in the pink dress and it was something that they should know about.

He found the female commander first. She had dark skin and eyes, and walked about with her claws exposed, and had eschewed her boots in the heat of Beacon Hills and was walking barefoot, and wore a wool skirt that barely reached her knees.

“Alpha," he started, and as usual when he tried to talk the words escaped him. It was like they flew away out of the back of his head so words that he understood were suddenly gone. He bowed his head. “Talk.”

“What is it, boy?” The alpha asked. She was not pleased that he was interrupting her although she had been at no real business.

“Domina," Liam began but the words fell away again, so he cursed in Lilian to his gods before trying again.

“You don’t have to call me that," the woman said, “alpha will suffice.” She was an alpha, he knew that it didn't scare him. He was trying so hard to tell them that the domina was hurting the Elskende but the words were all tangled and there were three languages worth to tangle.

“Alpha," he said with a sigh, a mutter of “by Toutatis”, “domina,” his face screwed up as he tried to find a way to say it, he put his hand to his face where the woman had slapped the Elskende, “Elskende," he said firmly.

“I don't understand you, boy,” the alpha continued.

“It’s fine, boy,” the scarred alpha said coming up behind them, he scared Liam the most of all the Wulver but he had not been unkind. “Take your time.”

“Elskende," Liam protested, “domina," and then he slapped himself hard on the face. “Edge,” he continued, “Alpha.”

“What language do you speak, boy, where are you from?” The scarred alpha seemed to want to find some sort of compromise, such as finding someone who could talk to Liam about something other than sheep. He could trade them for fleeces or meat, but he couldn't talk about this, he didn't have the words.

“He’s cursed by Toutatis," the woman said, “isn't that Lile or Picta?”

“Kali," the scarred man said, addressing the woman, “run and fetch Lydia," he took hold of Liam’s arm, “she speaks Lilian, well some.”

Kali pulled a face and muttered about being sent on errands but did leave.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, don't you worry, lad," the scarred alpha assured him, “no matter how long it takes.”

That was part of what scared Liam, he only had a vague idea of what the domina had said, but he knew the word for knife in Republican, they’d threatened him with it more than enough for that word to stick, and she had slapped the Elskende, and took pleasure in pinching him. The Elskende was kind but the domina was not.

The witch did not look amused to be taken from whatever it was that she had been doing, and she wanted to make that clear to the scarred Wulver who had requested her. She had a low, smoky voice, but despite that, she mostly used words that Liam did not know the ones he did were not for polite company.

The scarred Wulver did try to get a few words in but mostly he was just smiling proudly as if her anger was the greatest thing he had ever beheld, and she was worthy of such fondness no matter what it was that she did, but when she whirled on Liam with her eyes narrowed in rage, her shoulders hunched and looking like she was about to unleash horrors Liam didn't feel the usual urge to fight back, to resist, he took a step back.

She was a witch. It was only sensible.

She started to speak, in Old Lilean, the sort of language used by people who had learned it from books and came down to the Massif to trade, it was overly formal and featured strange pronunciations of common words so he had to think and chew on what she was saying to try to understand it completely.

“Tell me what you are trying to say, girl," her understanding of the genders in Lilean was entirely missing. Wulver’s lack of genders constantly confused Liam, so he wasn't going to complain, he could correct her later when his Wulver was more comfortable.

“The Domina has a knife, I think she got it from one of the guards, she plans to kill the Alpha," Liam said, glad at least there was someone who could vaguely communicate with him.

“Who is the domina? The Domina and Dominus captured are kept nowhere near here, and most of those were allowed to escape to freedom as it was easier than keeping them.” In his head, Liam translated what the woman said before he answered her.

“The Palanche,” he used the word closest to Elskende in his own language, “he serves the Domina.”

The witch didn't seem to understand that any more than she had when he had tried to speak to her in Wulver. “Palanche," he continued, “Elskende.”

“No, no,” she tried to explain, “Elskende would be Aime, not Palanche," Liam frowned, he understood the concept of Elskende well enough, it was the one who served the Alpha, the one who measured the Alpha’s temper to the pack, a sort of pack mother or queen or prince consort. “Le Principe du mari," he said in Lilean making sure that she understood the words he was slotting together although in Lilean conversation they would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. “La source de l’heritage, le pont du peuple.”

The witch frowned, and then nodded her understanding, “non,” she said, “l’aime du peuple.”

Liam wondered if he had committed a terrible mistake but the word in Republican didn't exist, the closet was the mother of animals or the wife of the wolf, and that word was unpleasant. The Elskende was intelligent, he understood the difference, that Elskende was only insulting in Republican because they dismissed the Wulver so very entirely as animals.

“The Elskende," the witch pressed.

“Yes, the domina rules over him, she is the one who puts clothes on him, she tells him what to do.” The witch seemed horrified at the very concept, but the Wulver were against the very idea of slavery and it could be that which displeased her so.

The Elskende was not a slave. He was in a sort of halfway space between Dominus and slave, in that the slaves obeyed him but the Domini expected him to obey.

“The Elskende has a Domina, she tells him what to do.” Liam was careful in the words he chose. He needed to her understand.

“There are no Domina here now," the witch repeated. She thought that she understood but she clearly did not.

“She wears a pink dress," Liam said, “and has dark hair, she took a knife, she wants the Elskende to kill the Alpha.”

The witch narrowed her eyes, her lips moving as she tried to turn the words that he said, “the elskende can't kill the alpha,” she said, “an omega can't kill their bonded alpha, they just can’t.”

“Then the domina will kill both of them," Liam finished, “she thinks it will buy her prestige in the Republic.”

The witch started to chew her lip, clearly thinking, her fingers finding the strange raven skull pendant that she wore. “She hurts him," Liam continued, “she hit him, and pinches him, she calls him words that even I know are improper.” She squeezed the skull so tightly it jumped out of her hands and fell against her sternum with a little thwap noise.

“Are you accusing her of laying hands on him?” There was a formality to her words as she spoken.

“Putain,” Liam said the word, one his mother had long since punished for having in his mouth, he had been speaking of the family’s cat at the time but still he had been punished, “that is what she calls him, she calls the alpha a dog, a beast, I do not know all the words she calls him. She makes her tone sound sweet and fond but the words she says are hateful. The esclave," he used the Lilean word, “she does not see them, to her they are blind, she kicks and hurt us, she took a knife to one of us, before, they do not care, the Domini, she is like them.” He felt uncomfortable matching her gaze, not because she would, like the domina, punish him, but because her gaze was intense and she wanted all of the information in his head. Her gaze felt like she would reach inside of his head and pull out that which made him himself. She scared him, she was a witch, a sorciere, he was unsure of what she was capable of. “She is a domina, they are," he stopped, the word was gone.

She thanked him and remained in her temper when she left him.

 

 

—

 

 

“The boy claims that the woman who watches over the Elskende is not a servant but his owner," she sat down on one of the pillows that were littered around the room. Her wolf was sat on the floor, cross-legged with what appeared to be stock dockets in front of him, he had a stylus stuck between his lips and there was ink smudged on his fingers. She knew that Derek was distracted with the adoption of the Elskende and that some of the minutiae of the invasion had fallen to Peter.

She didn't mind, he had been whining that Derek didn't trust him with responsibility.

Given the opportunity, Derek would have given Peter all of the responsibilities that he wanted, all of the boring tasks he loathed that still needed to be done.

“I vaguely remember a pair of tits," Peter said, but didn't look up from his papers, “she pointed them in my direction, but you know I don’t pay attention to the slaves, I uncuffed them, gave them some salve, left them to it,” he scratched something down with the tip of his pen on a wax tablet, “there was a boy there,” he said, “and a box," he smiled to himself, “I only remember the tits because they were nowhere near as good as yours, and well, a man tends to remember when even a pair of inferior tits are pointed at him.”

Lydia snorted out amusement, “people like you are the reason that women think they need to aim their tits at men,”

Peter raised his head and gave her a lascivious grin, “I've known a few ladies that can be distracted by a magnificent set of tits, I've even known you look a time or two.”

Lydia laughed despite herself, for some reason Peter’s lewd comments always made her laugh, and he said those things just to amuse her. They had been bonded since she was barely a child, still learning to tie moss to her body to cope with the mess of her menses. She hadn’t had tits to speak of then. Peter had always teased her, even then, years before she took him to her bed, telling her that any more than a handful was a waste and when they had become full and heavy he added how it was lucky he had such big hands just to make her laugh.

He always knew exactly how to make her laugh, and when she needed to.

“So the boy says she is hurting Derek's boy, if I tell Derek he will rip the head from her shoulders and destroy what little peace we have maintained here, they will rebel because we can't explain why because no one here speaks their accursed language.”

“What do you suggest, my love?" he asked her, “personally I have no problem with telling Derek, it provides at least some entertainment for the masses, the soldiers don't like that they are told not to hurt the peasants, sacrifice one to amuse them all, bread and circuses, after all, and I am doing what I can to put bread in their mouths.”

“There is a circus in the lower wards," she said, “Ennis found a bear, it must have been like finding a long-lost relative," Peter barked out a laugh. “If the Packs and the Sleuths are bored, have them fight amongst themselves there, we shall leave in a day or two, there certainly isn’t a reason to stay here, and then they can go back to doing what they want against themselves and each other.” Like the other seiðr, Lydia had no real care of what happened outside her own Pack, they were enemies who lived in the area and were just biding their time. She also knew that the other seiðr saw her pack exactly the same way. Especially as they had led both the Packs and the Sleuths to Beacon Hills.

“Banish her," Peter said, “shave her head, take her things, and send her into the wild with a loaf of bread and a blunt knife," he scratched something else on to the tablet in front of him, and then drew a line through it a few times, muttering to himself about Republican record keeping, and there were attempts at guessing what the words represented, but it was likely that the reports would end up in a fire and the warehouses would keep most of their secrets unless they had been raided.

Most of the food would be given to feed the slaves that they had emancipated and the citizens, the Wulver and Ulfbar by nature only carried what they could reasonably eat, and would hunt to supplement themselves, but some of them had a taste for wine and a warehouse with barrels would go a long way to ease tempers that were beginning to fray.

“You don't think that’s a death sentence?” Lydia asked.

“It gives her a slim chance," Peter said, “more than Derek would give her if she has raised a hand against the Alpha mate - he would not be able to control himself.”

“Bonding,” Peter sighed, “it turns alphas into morons, their instincts are little better than those of a wild animal, he will react with violence to any threat against the boy, no matter who that threat is, we have to deal with it. We could lock the woman in the omega’s cage, leave her there for the Republic to find, but they’d kill her quicker than Derek, and we only have the word of a slave.”

“A slave that came forward and warned us,” Lydia was playing whatever role was the opposition to Peter’s, an argument that could not defend itself was not an argument at all. That was one of the first lessons she had learned as a seiðr. If Peter had trusted the slave unequivocably she would have refused to trust him, although the fact she had brought the information to Peter told them that she did believe him.

“The omega has been nothing but kind to the slaves, he treats them like Pack," Peter said, “I myself have seen him share his food with them.”

“I've seen the woman take food from his plate, apparently when she talks to him sweetly the words she says are obscenities.”

“The question isn't her guilt," Peter said calmly, looking up from his tablet for the first time, “she is clearly a snake in our midst, the question is what to do with that snake.”

“Why didn't the Elskende bring word of what she did to us,” Lydia said, “I was with him whilst she did this, he never said a word.”

“In what language?” Peter asked, “or more likely, if she has always done it, maybe he doesn't realize what she’s doing is as terrible as it is.”

“We could try and ask him, use that Lilean boy to translate," Lydia suggested.

“Your Lilean is as bad as my Picta," Peter admitted, “and as good as the slave’s Republican, it would be a shit show," he shook his head.

“Do you think I should do it, or should we let Ennis have his fun?” Lydia asked, “I am unsure that they fear me as much as they should.”

“It would be less unpleasant if you did it," Peter said, “do you have any word what this word is?” he turned the paper towards her and stabbed at the writing with one pen.

She shrugged. “I shall fetch the shears," she stretched her arms up above her head in a way that made her back crack deliciously. “If I let you do this you’ll probably cut her distracted by her sub-par tits.”

“The alternative is that you try and reason out Kali’s notes and these Republican records, I’m pretty sure anything would be an improvement.”

 

 

—

 

 

Stiles was surprised to find that as long as someone was keeping an eye on him the Wulver did not care at all where he wandered within the upper tier. So he took advantage of it. The Wulver set to follow him, who was making hilariously bad attempts at subtlety, was dark hair and skinned with a crooked jaw, and made no attempt to talk to Stiles which suited him as the language barrier was bad enough with Derek without another Wulver to communicate with.

Stiles would stop now and again and bring a sprig of a plant to his nose and inhale deeply. He was suddenly surrounded by experiences that he had only been able to watch from stood upon a wobbling stool and hoping for a glance through the bars of his window. There was gravel which dislodged itself under his feet and paving stones which were uneven and more than once the soles of his sandals caught on the edges and he nearly tripped.

He was reassured that no one rushed forward to catch him. No one complained if he sat on the marble benches, or lingered looking at the beauty of the goddess Valia, with her base covered in ivy.

He surreptitiously dipped his hands into the fountain and took a mouthful expecting to be stopped but no one stopped him, and the freedom made him laugh.

He was wearing the strange clothes that the witch had brought him, the ones made of leather and the blouse with the red embroidery, but when the Wulver saw him they noted the collar he wore, the one that the Alpha had given him and as long he was safe and not in imminent threat they were content to leave him be. More than one had moved out of his way with a quick little dip of the head.

He felt free.

It was new and made him feel a little light headed.

He found the wisteria that he had seen so often from his window, and even looked around to see if he could see the window itself but could not make it out from the facade of the palace. He had a surge of bad temper, as instinctive as the desire he felt for Derek and tore out a handful of the purple vines.

Then he felt stupid because he was holding a handful of flowers, and he sat down on the ground in front of the bush facing the wall and started to weave the vines into a crown. It had been something that he had seen the young girls of the Republic do, dancing around like Valia wearing a crown of flowers.

He rubbed the blooms between his fingers to smear the scent behind his ears.

The Wulver who was guarding him laughed but Stiles did not care. He was free in a way that he had never been before. He felt light and loose and the way he did when he had spent time with Derek and the float was leaving his body, haunted with phantom aches of muscles well used and the joy and delight and tiredness and all of those things.

The Wulver didn't keep him locked away.

The Wulver didn’t complain about what he wore or what he did, and if he had done something that might cause him injury they tried to steer him from it, but they didn't shout at him for doing something as silly as tripping. No one had threatened him with a strop, and apart from Jennifer, no one was unkind. When it became obvious he was sharing his food with the slaves that they had attend him, for he was not sure how else they ate, they just increased the amount of food that he was served.

No one woke him when he slept. If he picked up a book there was no one to slap it out of his hands. No one cared if he drank wine or water. He had a guard but he suspected that it was more for his security than to prevent him doing anything.

The Wulver treated him as if he was precious but one of them, and that meant he was free in a way that he had never been. He was as much one of them as the clothes that he had worn.

He was still sat there, twining the vines into jewelry when Derek joined him, sitting down beside him and giving him a beaming smile that made him feel like he was the most important person in the entire empire. They were working out a pidgin language, he had picked up yes and no, and he knew to call his alpha Derek.

And Derek laughed when Stiles reached over with his coronet of vines and purple blossoms and dropped it on Derek's head. Derek grabbed his hand as it passed and placed a kiss on the palm before he straightened the crown and gave him a look of such beaming pride that Stiles just laughed with him.

It did not matter if the word that they used to describe him was so insulting because they treated him like he was something precious and special and Derek smiled at him like he had given him the world.

He would let the Wulver take him wherever they wanted to go. If they wanted to leave him behind he would still be free. It didn't matter anymore what Argent wanted, or how he could serve? How could he serve after knowing this, after seeing the way that Derek smiled at him.

“I am Elskende," Stiles said and curled his hand around the back of Derek's neck and pulled him into a kiss. “Yours.”

 

 

—

Epilogue

 

Stiles was sat on the carpet playing a clapping game with a laughing toddler when Liam knocked on the wooden strut and untied the door.

In his time as the alpha mate Stiles had taken over the duty of child care, not because he was ideally equipped as an omega, but instead because he was the weakest rider in the Pack.

Everyone capable of work in the Pack worked, Stiles included. So he was sat on the floor of his large tent, with the brazier hanging from the ceiling so little hands were less likely burn themselves, with a papoose on his back playing with the babies.

He looked up at Liam, who even now, after two years, still insisted on calling Stiles Elskende as a title no matter how often he was told, and grinned. “You're back,” he said, “did?”

“He’s just tending to the horses,” Liam answered, he reached down to pick up the toddler who was at his feet demanding to be lifted and settled him on his hip. The babies loved Liam who let them climb him like a frame and was happy to run around with them sat on his shoulders.

Liam had become one of the fiercest fighters in the Pack, but he was as soft as butter when it came to babies. Stiles had more of an immunity, but he still grinned like a fool when they laughed at him.

Derek loved the smell of babies on Stiles.

They had not been blessed with their own children, with the war that was ongoing with the Republic Derek was often ranging out on the Pack lands and so they weren't together as much as other alpha pairs because Stiles still had an unsteady seat in the saddle and couldn't manage the long days on horseback, even if he didn't want to leave his alpha.

It had been an adventure. He had come to the Pack lands unable to speak their language aware that they tolerated him only because Derek had chosen to bite him, and even that was questionable. Derek had offered trust and Stiles did not want to betray that.

With the war Derek would be gone for long periods and all of the education that he had was useless amongst the Pack, but the seiðr, Lydia, had been patient and taught him. She had found some of the most disgusting jobs that were necessary for the Pack and showed him how to do them. He complained but he did them and that earned him some credit with her. Eventually he had ended up looking after the babies giving their parents the opportunities to look after the herds or to roam with Derek looking for Republican soldiers.

Every time Derek returned Stiles spoke Wulver better and he'd stay for wonderful days of warmth and luxury and touch and conversation. Derek, it turned out, was loquacious, especially when he was knotted up inside Stiles inside their tent, the one which Stiles was in now.

When Stiles had made the decision to accompany the Wuvlver and not act out on behalf of the Republic, which he had that day in Lord Argent’s garden when he had made Derek a crown of wisteria, he had known that it would be hard, he had not know that it would make him so happy. It was not an easy life but it was a happy one.

When they had started leaving their children with him he had felt angry and a little objectified until Lydia, not bothering to explain, had left her wolf, Peter, with the babies and sat him on a horse until he couldn't sit any longer, then when he was waddling like he had given birth to the horse, she sat him down with the babies and asked him if he understood now.

He had, and spent the next day warming goats milk for them, trying not to move because of the ache in his thighs and ass.

And now Derek was returned to him. Liam would have told him if he was hurt or if something worse had happened so Stiles, without thinking to unlash the papoose from his back and handing the baby therein to Liam, he just tugged a cape over his shoulders and went out into the winter.

Stiles hated the cold. He had grown up in the hot rooms of the Republic with its sweet winds and light clothes and the cold and wet of the pack lands had been a surprise but he had quickly learned the deliciousness of lying in his furs in the arms of his alpha as the two of them complained about the snow that kept them inside with nothing to do but make love and pretend to complain about the snow.

He had missed Derek.

Had he been asked, back in the Republic, hiding from Jennifer's cruelties and complaints, if he could be happy in the tents of the Wulver, with an alpha who at first he could not communicate with, he would have laughed and ducked the question. He was a good Republican who existed to serve. He would have gladly given his life in service, and instead a Wulver had ransacked the city and claimed its treasures and given him happiness more than he could truly express.

Even if he was a rather poor seat on a horse.

He had missed Derek and he was eager to see him even if the baby on his back was grizzling displeasure at the sudden flash of cold.

Derek’s face split into a grin when he saw Stiles, spreading open his arms so that his cloak fell to show his bare arms, because Derek didn’t feel the cold like a normal person, Stiles had told him that so many times. “Beloved," he said and now Stiles knew that that was what Elskende meant. He had so many questions about his place in the Pack and his value to them, but that Derek meant it when he said Elskende he was beloved.

“Alpha!" Stiles ran across to him, the snow crunching under his boots, and the baby on his back grizzling even more as she prepared for a wail but went quiet when Derek closed his arms, cloak and all around them and nuzzled his nose into the curve of Stiles’ neck, his chin butting against the gold of his carcanet.

“It’s done,” Derek said, “we have him.”

It had taken two years to lure Gerard into the Pack lands, although the seiðr had thought it would take much longer. They had brought him on a wagon, bound to the driver’s seat by the wrists, and wrapped him in furs so he did not freeze on the way. They hadn’t changed his clothes and he had clearly been hurt. His stola was there, and his chiton but a bear fur was draped over his legs and another around his shoulders. At some point someone had even given him a wool cap, not entirely unlike the one the baby on Stiles’ back wore.

What surprised Stiles was that he had no idea what it was that he should be feeling.

Argent was just an old man, bound and covered in fur so that he didn’t freeze to death in the snow, he was spitting out hate and it was like his teeth were too large for his mouth.

Stiles took a step back from Derek, allowing Derek to keep hold of his hand, “I thought you’d be impressive," Stiles told him in Republican, it had been so long he didn't even think in the language any more.

“At least someone speaks a civilised language,” Argent said, he tried to move himself so that he was sprawled in the wagon as if he was on a chaise in his palace, or a bench in the Athenaeum.

“You don’t know who I am," Stiles said and it was a surprise.

“You are the dog's whore," Argent answered.

“No,” Stiles said, “I am his mate," he used the word carefully, the closest word to alpha mate in Republican was bitch and that had caused him so much hurt when Derek had first bitten him. “But I was your whore.”

Argent didn't give away any emotion. “For most of my life I lived in your palace waiting for you.” Argent scoffed, “your domina trained me, the people who you kept as slaves made me think that I was special, and now,” he took a step closer to the wagon, “you don't even recognie me.”

“Should I?” Argent asked.

“No, I don't suppose you should," Stiles said, then he turned to Derek, “I should get inside, someone doesn't like the cold more than I do,” he looked up at the sky, before he buried himself against Derek's arms, which he wrapped around him, “there’s snow coming, love, I don't care what happens to this old man, he belongs to the seiðr now.”

 

 


	2. Art




End file.
